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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



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Lessons in Psychology 



DESIGNED ESPECIALLY FOR 



Private Students, and as a Text Book in 
Secondary Schools 




B , 







J. PfGORDY, Ph. D. 



Professor of Psychology and Pedagogy i?i Ohio University, 
Athens, Ohio 



COLUMBUS, O 

Hann & Adair, Printers 

1890 



PREFACE 




ESS than a year ago, a number of teachers at 
an institute which the author was attend- 
ing, requested him to give them Correspondence 
Lessons in Psychology. He consented without 
adequately considering the amount of labor it would 
involve. For a little reflection enabled him to see 
that the only author he could recommend to them 
— Sully — was much too difficult for students of 
their attainments. He soon saw that the labor of 
explaining so difficult a book w r ould be much 
greater than that of writing lessons directly for 
them week by week. He accordingly decided to 
do this, and this little book is the result. 

This account of its origin will explain a 
number of its characteristics. As appears from its 
title, it does not undertake to discuss, even in a 
superficial way, all the phases of mental activity. 
It deals only with those facts and laws of mind, 
which, in the judgment of the author, it is most 
useful for teachers to be familiar with. 

The style of the book, as the reader w T ill at 
once see, is colored by the fact that it was originally 
written for a class of teachers, with most of whom 
the author was personally acquainted, and whom 



4 PREFACE 

he had in his mind as he wrote. Although the 
" Lessons " have been carefully revised, he has not 
thought it necessary to carry the work of revision 
to such an extent as to take from them that familiar 
tone which he thought proper to use in addressing 
a class of pupils. 

The book lays no special claim to originality. 
The object of the author throughout has been to 
call the attention of his readers to important mental 
facts in such a way as to set them to observing 
their own minds and the minds of their pupils, in 
order to see whether or not he was right. Pro- 
foundly convinced as he is, of the importance of 
a knowledge of Psychology to the teacher, he is 
quite as strongly convinced that the only really 
fruitful knowledge of Psychology which the teacher 
will ever gain he will derive from a study of his 
own mind and the minds of the people with 
whom he comes in contact, and that books about 
Psychology are useful chiefly as they give sugges- 
tions in this direction. Accordingly, the aim of the 
author throughout has been to act the part of a 
guide in a strange city — tell his readers where to 
look to find valuable truths. If he succeeds in 
stimulating them to become diligent students of 
their own minds and the minds of their pupils, 
he will be more than satisfied. 

J. P. Gordy. 
Athens, Ohio, July 7, i8go. 



CONTENTS 



LESSON I. PAGE 

The Benefits of Psychology to the Teacher ... 9 

LESSON II. 
The Benefits of Psychology to the Teacher. — 
Continued 18 

LESSON III. 
What is Psychology 27 

LESSON IV. 
The Method of Psychology 36 

LESSON V. 
What are We Conscious of. 45 

LESSON VI. 
What are We Conscious of. — Continued 55 

LESSON VII. 
Attention 64 

LESSON VIII. 
Attention. — Continued 72 

LESSON IN. 
Attention. — Continued 82 



6 * CONTENTS 

LESSON X. 
Knowing, Feeling and Willing 91 

LESSON XI. 
Sensation and Perception 100 

LESSON XII. 
Sensation and Perception. — Continued ■, 108 

LESSON XIII. 
Sensation and Perception — the Cultivation of 

the Observing Powers , 116 

LESSON XIV. 
The Cultivation of the Observing Powers, , . . 125 

LESSON XV. 
Memory and the Laws of Association 134 

LESSON XVI. 
Memory and the Laws of Association. — Cont'd 141 

LESSON XVII. 
Imagination 149 

LESSON XVIII. 
Imagination. — Continued 157 

LESSON XIX. 
Imagination. — Continued 165 

LESSON XX. 
Conception 173 

LESSON XXI. 
Conception. — Continued , 181 



CONTENTS 7 

LESSON XXII. 
Conception. — Continued 190 

LESSON XXIII. 
Conception. — Continued 199 

LESSON XXIV. 
Conception. — Continued . . , , 207 

LESSON XXV. 
Conception. — Continued 215 

LESSON XXVI. 
Judgment 223 

LESSON XXVII. 
Reasoning 232 

LESSON XXVIII. 
Reasoning. — Continued 240 

LESSON XXIX. 
Reasoning. — Continued . 248 

LESSON XXX. 
Reasoning. — Continued . . . 256 

LESSON XXXI. 
Reasoning. — Continued 264 

LESSON XXXII. 
Reasoning. — Concluded 271 

LESSON XXXIII. 
The Primary Intellectual Functions 279 

LESSON XXXIV. 
The Primary Intellectual Functions. — Cont'd . 287 



8 CONTENTS 

LESSON XXXV. 
The Primary Intellectual Functions. — Cont'd . 296 

LESSON XXXVI. 
Development 305 

LESSON XXXVII. 
Development. — Continued 314 

LESSON XXXVIII. 
Development. — Continued 323 

LESSON XXXIX. 
Development. — Continued 330 

LESSON XL. 
The Study of Children 338 



Lessons in Psychology 




LESSON I. 

THE BENEFITS OF PSYCHOLOGY TO THE TEACHER, 



have no doubt that you believe that it is 
Hf worth while for you to study a great many 

things which you do not expect to make 
any practical use of. You believe, for example, 
that it is a good thing to study algebra, and geom- 
etry, although I imagine you do not expect to find 
any use for them in the business of life ; you want 
to study them, not because you think the knowl- 
edge of them is likely to be useful to you — unless 
you should be called upon to teach them — but be- 
cause you think the study of them will develop 
your mind. 

Probably that is one of the reasons why you 
wish to study Psychology. And it certainly is a 
good reason for studying it. I know of no subject 
better calculated to develop the power of thinking 



IO LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

than Psychology. You know very well that the 
way to develop any power of the mind is to use it, 
and it is quite impossible to make any headway in 
studying Psychology without thinking. That is 
the reason why it is so hard. When any one makes 
an assertion about your mind — and that is what 
Psychology consists of, assertions about your mind 
and the minds of ail human beings — it is often, 
indeed, generally, impossible to realize what it 
means without thinking. Thus, suppose I say that 
a mental fact is known directly to but one person 
only, and that one the person experiencing it. In 
order to realize what that means, you have to look 
into your own mind for an example of a mental 
fact. You recall the oft-repeated assertion, nobody 
knows what one thinks but himself, and you realize 
that a thought is a mental fact known to but one 
person directly, and that one the person experi- 
encing it. But in order to know what other facts 
are mental facts, you must think long and care- 
fully until you have made up your mind just what 
facts are known to but one person directly, and 
that one the person experiencing them. 

And even when you can understand an assertion 
which any one makes about your mind without 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY II 

looking into your own mind, it is generally neces- 
sary for you to do so before you can decide intel- 
ligently whether or not it is true. Thus, suppose 
I say that no matter how interesting you make your 
recitations, you cannot get the continuous attention 
of your pupils unless by asking questions, or by 
some such means you give them some other motive 
for attending besides interest. That statement 
you can understand without special effort. But in 
order to determine w r hether or not it is true you 
must look into your own mind. You must ask your- 
self whether any one can keep your attention for 
a half or three-quarters of an hour simply by being 
interesting. And if you set about answering it in 
the right way, you will think until you recall some 
speaker who was interesting, but who never asked 
you questions, or did anything to keep your atten- 
tion except try to interest you, and I am sure you 
will remember that your mind wandered when he 
was speaking, much more than it would have done 
if you had known that he would question you about 
what he was saying when he had finished. 

For these two reasons — (i) because you cannot 
understand most of the assertions in Psychology 
without thinking; and (2), because even when you 



12 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

understand them you cannot tell whether or not 
they are true without thinking — I know of no sub- 
ject better calculated to make a pupil think, and, 
therefore, better fitted to develop the power of 
thinking than Psychology. 

But apart from this, I imagine that you wish to 
study Psychology for quite practical reasons. As 
a man who intends to be a surveyor studies trigo- 
nometry, not merely because it will develop his 
mind but because of the use it will be to him, so 
you study Psychology because you think the knowl- 
edge of it will make you a better teacher. 

How will it help you in this direction ? Before 
you can answer this question you must answer an- 
other. What is teaching ? People used to intimate 
their opinion of the true answer to this question by 
saying that a teacher u keeps school. " But " keep- 
ing school " is not teaching. Nor is it to teach to 
hear recitations. To teach is to deal with mind, is to 
get it to do something which it would not have done 
apart from the teacher, in order to get it to become 
something which it would not have become apart 
from him. I repeat — and I ask you to notice this 
statement carefully — to teach is_to get the mind to 
do something or rather many things which it would 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 13 

not have done apart from the teacher, in order to 
get it to become what it would not have become 
apart from him. 

Now, in order to do this intelligently you plainly 
need to have as clear an idea as possible of what 
you want your pupils to become. You take charge 
of a school and have a lot of boys and girls whom 
you want to make different from what they are. If 
they were everything that you want them to be- 
come you would not undertake to teach them. 
What is it that you want them to become? In 
other words, in what respect do you wish them to 
change as a result of your teaching? That ques- 
tion, the study of Psychology will help you to 
answer, and the more you know about it, the more 
clearly and fully and definitely you can answer it. 

Quite likely you think you can answer it now. 
You say you want your pupils to have better de- 
veloped minds at the end of each day than they 
had at the beginning. But better developed in 
what direction ? Have you ever asked yourself 
that question ? The North American Indians, for 
example, had remarkable powers of observation. 
They could track an enemy through a forest where 
you could have seen no evidence that a human 



14 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

being had ever been. Will yon be content to have 
yonr pupils acqnire powers similar to those pos- 
sessed by the North American Indians ? Is this 
what yon want them to become ? Again, the 
Chinese have remarkable memories. I snppose 
there are plenty of educated Chinamen who re- 
member almost word for word the nine classics 
written and compiled and edited by Confucius. 
Do you want your pupils to have minds like 
the Chinese? Is this what you want them to 
become ? 

So you see that when you say you want to help 
your pupils develop their minds you have by no 
means proved that you know precisely what, as an 
intelligent teacher, you ought to aim at. And it 
seems to me that unless you know what to aim at 
you cannot hope to have success. Do you think an 
architect could build a beautiful house if he began 
to build it and worked at it from day to day with- 
out having in his mind, so to speak, the house he 
was trying to build? Well, if a carpenter must 
have a picture in his mind of the kind of house he 
wants to build in order to build it, how can you 
hope to succeed in moulding and shaping and form- 
ing the minds of your pupils in an intelligent way 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 15 

unless you have the clearest ideas of what you want 
them to become ? 

But at any rate, perhaps you think you are clear 
of one respect in which you want your pupils to 
change : you want them to become less ignorant — 
you want them to know more. But to know more 
of what? You have not got very far when you say 
that you want to help your pupils to acquire knowl- 
edge, unless you have made up your mind what 
knowledge is worth acquiring. You need to know 
very clearly that there is a good deal of history in 
the text-books which is not worth learning, and a 
good deal out of them which is in the highest de- 
gree important, and the same is true of the other 
subjects you teach. How are you to make up your 
mind what knowledge is really worth acquiring? 
I think the study of Psychology will help you to do 
that. It will help you to see the effect which the 
acquiring of this or that piece of knowledge will 
have on the mind, and when you see that you will 
know how to estimate its worth. 

And here again I think you see that it is quite 
impossible for you to succeed in teaching unless in 
some way you are able to decide intelligently what 
you ought to get your pupils to learn. Until you 



3 6 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

are able to decide that you can only aim in the first 
place to get them to learn everything in the text- 
book. And this is bad for two reasons : in the first 
place, text-books are often written by men who 
know so little of what they are writing about 
that they cannot tell w r hat is important and what 
is not important. And in the second place, intel- 
ligent men put many things in text-books not that 
students may learn them, but that they may be able 
to refer to them if they have occasion to use them. 
No one but a fool would commit to memory a rail- 
road guide. And yet railroad guides are veiy use- 
ful, but when any one has occasion for that kind of 
knowledge he goes to the guide and remembers 
what he finds there just as long as he wants it and 
then does not trouble his head with it any more. 
Now, intelligent men put many such facts in the 
books they write — facts which they do not expect 
any one to learn, but which they think persons may 
sometimes have occasion to refer to. For these two 
reasons, it is very unfortunate for a teacher to have 
to rely entirely on his text-books in deciding what 
to teach. 

Note carefully that in this lesson I have been 
trying to show you that a study of Psychology will 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 1J 

help you to see at what you ought to aim. It 
will help you to see the kind of deYelopment you 
ought to try to help them get, and the kind of 
knowledge you ought to try to teach them. 

LIST OF QUESTIONS. 

1. What are the two reasons for studying 
Psychology ? 

2. How is any power of the mind developed? 

3. What are the two reasons which make the 
study of Psychology so useful in developing the 
power to think ? 

4. What is teaching? 

5. Give two illustrations to show that when 
you say you want your pupils to have better devel- 
oped minds your statement lacks clearness. 

6. Show that you cannot succeed as a teacher 
unless you know what to aim at. 

7. Show that when vou say you want to make 
your pupils less ignorant your statement lacks clear- 
ness. 

8. How will the study of Psychology help 
you in this direction ? 

9. Why should not a teacher limit himself to 
teaching what is in text-books? 

10. What is the central thought which this 
lesson aims to brine out? 




l8 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

LESSON II. 

THE BENEFITS OF PSYCHOLOGY TO THE TEACHER. 

.0 succeed well in any difficult undertaking, 
three things are necessary: (i), one must 
see clearly the thing to be done; (2), he 
must have a clear idea of the best means of doing 
it ; and (3), he must have a strong motive for doing 
it well. He in whom these conditions meet most 
perfectly — who sees most clearly the thing to be 
done, who has the clearest perception of the best 
means of doing it, who has the strongest motive 
for making strenuous efforts to do it, is the likeliest 
person to succeed in any difficult undertaking. 

I do not believe the study of Psychology can 
be urged on the ground that it is likely to do much 
toward making the teacher interested in his work, 
and more w T illing, therefore, to work hard in order 
to do it well. I think, indeed,, that it is not with- 
out effect in that direction. The work of teachers 
who make no study of mind is likely to be mechan- 
ical, while the work of teachers who base their ef- 
forts on a knowledge of mind is rational. And 
mechanical w 7 ork is uninteresting, unattractive — 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 19 

fit only for machines. Anything, therefore, which 
tends to make a teacher's work rational certainly 
tends to make it interesting. I think that this was 
what Fitch meant when he called teaching the no- 
blest of arts and the sorriest of trades. Practiced 
mechanically, it is indeed a trade, and a sorry one at 
that; practiced rationally — practiced by one who 
realizes that he is dealing with mind, and who uses 
this method or that not because some one else has 
used it, but because his knowledge of mind leads 
him to believe that it is the best, it is the noblest of 
arts. 

But while I believe that the study of Psychol- 
ogy is of some benefit to the teacher in that it tends 
to give him more interest in his work, I do not 
intend to urge it on this ground. It is for the other 
tw T o reasons (1), because of the clearness which it 
is fitted to give to the aim of the intelligent teacher, 
and (2) because of the light it throws on the best 
methods of realizing that aim, that it seems to me 
no teacher who is ambitious to succeed should neg- 
lect to study it as thoroughly and as faithfully as 
possible. 

In the last lesson I tried to show you what the 
study of Psychology can do for you in the first di- 



20 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

rection. I tried to show you that when you are 
able to say that your aim is to bring about the de- 
velopment of your pupils, you have not got very 
far unless you have made up your mind as to the 
value, so to speak, of the various faculties of the 
mind — that unless you know the worth of the ob- 
serving powers, and of the various kinds of mem- 
ory, imagination, and reasoning, you cannot pro- 
ceed intelligently in training them. And in like 
manner, unless you have made up your mind as to 
u what knowledge is of most worth," I tried to show 
you that it is of little use to be able to say that you 
want to induce your pupils to acquire knowledge. 
I tried further to show you that Psychology, by 
helping you to see the relation of the various 
powers of the mind to each other, will help you to 
see the kind of development you ought to aim at; 
and also, that by helping you to see the effect of 
the various kinds of knowledge upon the mind it 
will help you to decide u what knowledge is of 
most worth. " 

But not only will the study of Psychology tend 
to give clearness and definiteness to your aim, it 
will tend quite as strongly, if not more so, to show 
you what you must do to realize that aim. 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 21 

In dealing with mind we must use the same 
kind of methods which we use when we deal with 
objects in the material world. What we accom- 
plish in the material world we accomplish by put- 
ting objects where they will be subject to new in- 
fluences, so that the laws of nature may do the 
work we want. Mortar in one place and bricks 
in another do nothing to make the walls of a 
house, but put the bricks on a strong founda- 
tion, and put the mortar between them, and you 
have a strong wall. All you have done, you will 
note, is to move the bricks and mortar so as to put 
them in new positions and make them subject to 
new influences, so that the laws of nature could do 
the work you wanted. Heat water to the boiling 
point and it will change into steam, and if you 
leave it where it can escape nothing will come of it. 
But move the water into a confined place so that 
the steam cannot escape, and then you can make 
it drive immense palaces across the sea, or pull 
huge trains across the continent. Every invention 
which has ever been made is simply a way of mov- 
ing things into new positions where they are sub- 
ject to new influences, so that the laws of nature 
may do the desired work. All the force that is em- 



22 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

ployed in nature exists in nature. All that man ac- 
complishes he accomplishes by making the forces of 
nature work under different circumstances, and by 
% turning them into different channels from those 
in which they would have worked apart from 
him. It is by making nature our servant that we 
have made such wonderful progress in material civ- 
ilization in the nineteenth century. And how is 
this that we have been able to make nature work 
for us in such wonderful ways ? Simply by know- 
ing the laws of nature. Knowing the laws of na- 
ture, we have been able, so to speak, to foresee 
what she would do under certain circumstances, 
and the result is the steam-engine, the telegraph,, 
the telephone, the phonograph, and all the other 
inventions which minister to our well-being. 

Now, as I have already said, in dealing with 
mind we must work in the same way. Precisely 
as everything which happens in nature, is due 
to the laws of nature, so everything which hap- 
pens in mind is due to the laws of mind. Pre- 
cisely as our power in nature depends upon the 
skill with which we get her to work for us, so 
our power in dealing with mind depends upon 
our ability to get it so to act that the results 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 23 

we desire will follow. Precisely as success in deal- 
ing with nature consists in supplying the con- 
ditions which make it possible for nature to do the 
desired work, so success in dealing with the mind 
consists in supplying the conditions which make 
it possible for the mind to do the work we want. 
And precisely as the better we know the laws 
of nature, in other words, the better we know the 
conditions under which nature will produce this or 
that result, the better we can supply them, so the 
better we know the laws of the mind, the better, in 
other words, we know the conditions under which 
the mind will do this or that, the better we can sup- 
ply them. The aim of the teacher being a certain 
kind of development, and the communication of a 
certain kind of knowledge, evidently the more he 
knows of the conditions under which the mind de- 
velops, and the conditions under which it acquires 
knowledge, the better he can supply them. 

Do you ask if a corresponding increase in the 
teacher's knowledge of mind, and a corresponding 
increase in his skill in basing his work on that 
knowledge would enable him to work such miracles 
in the minds of his pupils as inventors have worked 
in nature through their knowledge of the laws of 



24 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

nature ? I cannot, of course, answer such a ques- 
tion. No one can. But in the School of the far- 
off Future — when no teacher will be allowed to en- 
ter a school-room who has not made a thorough 
study of Psychology, and who has not proved to 
the entire satisfaction of competent judges his 
ability to apply what he has learned — in that 
school there w T ill be no dull, listless, inattentive 
pupils. There will be no boys who leave school 
because they do not like it. There will be no 
pupils who hate books. As a child learns not only 
rapidly but with intense pleasure from the time of 
his birth to the time he starts to school simply be- 
cmise the activities in which he spontaneously en- 
gages are fitted to his state of development, so he 
will continue to learn rapidly and zvith intense pleas- 
ure after he starts to school if the zvork he is set to 
doing is adapted to his state of development. Do you 
know who Comenius was ? It was he who said if 
our pupils do not learn it is our fault. And he was 
undoubtedly right. If w r e supplied the proper con- 
ditions our pupils would as certainly learn as a 
train will move when the engineer turns on the 
steam. Do you know who Pestalozzi was? It 
was he who said that if pupils are inattentive the 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 25 

teacher should first look to himself for the reason. 
And he also was undoubtedly right. i\s certainly 
as a blade of corn will grow and mature if it is 
treated right — if the proper conditions are sup- 
plied — so certainly will our pupils attend, and 
think as the result of attending, and develop as 
the result of thinking, if we supply the proper 
conditions. 

LIST OF QUESTIONS. 

i. What three things are essential to success 
in a difficult undertaking? 

2. What can the study of Psychology do to 
make a teacher interested in his work? 

3. What did Fitch say about teaching, and 
w 7 hat did he mean by it? 

4. How will the study of Psychology help a 
teacher to see at what he should aim ? 

5. How do men accomplish anything in 
nature ? 

6. Illustrate your statement. 

7. Show that the same thing is true in our 
dealings with mind. 

8. Do you believe that teachers could accom- 
plish as wonderful results in dealing with the 
minds of their pupils as inventors have accom- 



26 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

plished in dealing with nature if they knew as 
much about mind? 

9. Why do so many pupils dislike the work 
of school? 

10. What did Comenius say w 7 as the reason 
our pupils do not learn ? 




LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 2J 

LESSON III. 

WHAT IS PSYCHOLOGY? 

N the last two lessons I tried to show you 
that the study of Psychology will help you 
to see the goal which you should try to 
reach, and what course you should take in order to 
reach it. But while we have been talking about 
how Psychology will help you in teaching, the 
question, what is Psychology? has been left un- 
answered. That question I shall try to answer in 
this lesson. 

The answer usually given is that Psychology 
is the science of the mind or soul. But what is the 
soul ? People who have not thought carefully about 
it would probably say that whatever it is, it cer- 
tainly is not the mind. Animals, they would say, 
plainly have minds, but no one believes that they 
have souls. I think it may serve to give clearness 
to our ideas to consider the question whether or not 
animals have souls. And without doubt in the con- 
fitsed sense in which the word is used in popular lan- 
guage the true answer is that they have. If you 



28 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

suppose that animals have no souls let me ask you 
if you have one. You will undoubtedly say that 
you have. Suppose I ask you whether you are al- 
ways dreaming when you are asleep ? You will 
probably answer that you are not. And when you 
say that you are not dreaming, what do you 
mean ? 

"I mean," I imagine you saying, " that there 
are no thoughts or feelings in my mind." 

" And when there are no thoughts and feelings 
in your mind does your soul continue to exist?" 

" I do not understand you." 

" You say that you do not think you are al- 
ways dreaming when you are asleep, and when you 
say that you are not dreaming you say that you 
mean that you have no thoughts or feelings in your 
mind. So far as thoughts and feelings go, I under- 
stand you to say that you are exactly like a dead 
man. A dead man has no thoughts and feelings, 
neither have you when you are not dreaming. 
Now, when you have no thoughts and feelings in 
your mind, does your soul continue to exist?" 

" I certainly believe it does, as I have no 
reason to believe that it ceases to exist when I fall 
asleep and begins to exist as soon as I awake, as 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 29 

must be the case if it ceases to exist when I have 
no thoughts and feelings. " 

"Then you do not mean by soul the thoughts 
and feelings of which you are conscious, or a part 
of those thoughts and feelings?" 

" Again I do not understand you." 

" You say that your soul does not cease to ex- 
ist when you have no thoughts and feelings ; now, 
if it does not, your soul cannot be your thoughts 
and feelings, can it?" 

u Why not?" 

"Because if it were, when you have no thoughts 
and feelings you would have no soul, would you?" 

%i I see that I would not have." 

" And it cannot be a part of your thoughts and 
feelings, can it ?" 

" No, for if it were any part of them when I 
had none of any kind I would have no soul." 

" You mean by soul, then, not thoughts and 
feelings, but the thing that has thoughts and feel- 
ings?" 

" Again I am obliged to say that I do not 
understand you." 

" A German professor is said to have begun a 
first lesson on Psychology in this way : l Students, 



30 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

think about the wall.' After a moment's pause, 
( Now think about the thing that thinks about the 
wall. The thing that thinks about the wall is what 
is to be the subject of your study.' That is what you 
mean by soul, is it not — the thing which thinks 
and feels, the thing which has thoughts and feel- 
ings?" 

"It is." 

" And what do you mean by mind ?" 

" I mean that which thinks and feels, or that 
which has thoughts and feelings?" 

" But things which are equal to the same thing 
are equal to each other, are they not?" 

" They are." 

u And if the soul is that which thinks and feels, 
and the mind is that which thinks and feels, they 
must be the same, must they not?" 

" I see that they must." 

" If then you say that dogs, for instance, have 
minds, can you refuse to admit that they have 
souls?" 

" I am obliged to confess that I cannot." 

In this imaginary dialogue you may say that 
in the nature of the case I can prove what I want 
to prove, since I can put any words in your mouth 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 3 1 

I please. But if you will carefully consider it, you 
will see that you are obliged to say that the soul is 
one of three things : It is either all of our thoughts 
and feelings, or a part of them, or the thing which 
has thoughts and feelings, the thing which thinks 
and feels and wills. If you say that the soul is all 
or a part of our thoughts and feelings — mental 
facts, in a word — then instead of saying that Psy- 
chology is the science of the soul it would be much 
plainer to say that Psychology is the science of 
mental facts. But if you say that the soul is that 
which thinks and feels and wills, then, as we have 
seen, there is no difference between soul and mind, 
and we are left with the definition, Psychology is 
the science of the mind. 

But what do you mean by mind ? What we 
have seen in the case of the soul — that it consists 
of thoughts, feelings, and acts of the will, or that 
which thinks, feels, and wills — is plainly true of 
the mind also. It must either be that which thinks, 
feels, and wills, or it must be the thoughts, feelings, 
and acts of will of which we are conscious — men- 
tal facts in one word. But what do we know about 
that which thinks, feels, and wills, and what can 
we find out about it? Where is it? You will 



32 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

probably say, in the brain. But if you are speak- 
ing literally, if you say that it is in the brain, as a 
pencil is in my pocket, then you must mean that 
it takes up room, that it occupies space, and that 
would make it very much like a material thing. 
In truth, the more carefully you consider it, the 
more plainly you will see what thinking men have 
known for a long time — that we do not know and 
can not learn anything about the thing which 
thinks and feels and wills. It is beyond the range 
of human knowledge. The books which define 
Psychology as the science of the mind have not a 
word to say about that which thinks and feels and 
wills. They are entirely taken up with these 
thoughts and feelings and acts of the will — mental 
facts in a word, trying to tell us what they are, and 
arrange them in classes, and tell us the circum- 
stances or conditions under which they exist. 

It seems to me, therefore, that it would be 
much better to discard these old definitions and say 
that Psychology is the science of mental facts, not 
because the old definitions are untrue, but because 
they are vague and indefinite. 

But what is a mental fact ? Let us say to start 
with that it is a fact known directly to but one per- 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 33 

son, and that the person experiencing it. If you 
are standing on the street with a half dozen friends, 
you can all see the houses, and men, and women, 
and horses. You can all hear the tramping of feet 
and the clatter of the vehicles that pass along the 
street. These facts are open to the observation of 
all of you alike. But there is a clsss of facts known 
directly to but one of you — what you think and 
feel and will, you know, and no one else does f what 
A thinks and feels and wills he knows and no one 
else does. These thoughts and feelings and voli- 
tions are mental facts — facts known to but one 
person, and that the person experiencing them. 

But I believe there are mental facts not known 
to any one. If you are intent upon a book the 
clock may strike and you may not hear it at the time, 
and a minute afier you may be entirely sure that 
you heard the clock strike a minute before, 
although you did not know that you heard it. 
The true explanation of facts like these seems to 
be that the clock produced a sensation of sound at 
the time it struck, and in the sense of having re- 
ceived a sensation of sound because of it, you heard 
it. But vou did not know that vou heard it until 
the minute after. Now what must we call this 



34 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

sensation? Plainly a mental fact, although there 
was a time when it was not known by any one. 
Still, however, it is marked off quite sharply from 
all other facts — physical facts, we may call them, 
which may be known with equal directness by 
any number of people — by the circumstance that 
although not known, it is knowable by but one 
person, and that the person experiencing it. We 
may then define a mental fact as a fact known or 
knowable to but one person directly and that the 
person experiencing it, and Psychology as the 
science of mental facts, the science which under- 
takes to ascertain, classify and state the conditions 
of mental facts. 

LIST OF QUESTIONS. 

i. How is the question, u What is Psychol- 
ogy, " usually answered? 

2. Would you say that dogs have souls? 

3. How would you defend your answer? 

4. What is the objection to defining Psychol- 
ogy as the science of the mind or soul ? 

5. How would you define Psychology? 

6. What is a mental fact ? 

7. What is a physical iact? 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 35 

8. Into what two classes would you put men- 
tal facts ? 

9. Can you have mental facts without know- 
ing that you have them ? 

10. Give examples. 




36 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

LESSON IV. 

THE METHOD OF PSYCHOLOGY 



N the last lesson, I tried to make clear the 
subject of which Psychology treats. I ob- 
jected to the usual definitions, u Psychol- 
ogy is the science of the soul," " Psychology is the 
science of the mind," not because they are incor- 
rect, but because I do not believe they give young 
students definite ideas. I want you to get at the 
outset the clearest possible notion of the subject 
you are to study. I want you to realize that the 
facts of which you are directly conscious, the facts 
which you know better than any one else in the 
world — that these and similar facts form the sub- 
ject of which Psychology treats. 

" But what is it," perhaps you ask, " that Psy- 
chology wants to do with them, and what kind of 
mental facts does it care about. I had the tooth- 
ache last week. That, if I understand you, was a 
mental fact, but Psychology has no interest in 
facts like that, has it?" No and yes. That you, 
John Smith, had the toothache is a matter of su- 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 37 

preme indifference to Psychology. Psychology 
has no more interest in that fact than has the sci- 
ence of Botany in the fact that yon have a bed of 
geraniums. Like all sciences, its aim is general 
knowledge, and that you, John Smith, had the 
toothache is not general knowledge. But when 
you had the toothache you found it difficult to 
study, did you not? I am sure you did. If you 
will think a little, you can recall a great many 
facts like that in your experience. Not only in- 
tense pain but very keen delight are unfavorable 
to that concentration of mind which we call study. 
You got a letter some time ago that made you very 
happy, and you remember that you could not put 
your mind on anything for an hour, and if you will 
study the mental facts of other people you will find 
that their experience is like yours. So that you 
see that although Psychology cares nothing about 
you as an individual, nor your toothache, there was 
something in that experience which it does care 
about. So far as your experience illustrated what 
would be true of all minds under similar circum- 
stances, so Jar it is a matter of interest to Psychol- 
ogy. 

It is putting the same idea in another form to 



38 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

say that what Psychology especially seeks to ascer- 
tain is laws of mind or mental facts. A law of 
mental facts is a general truth about mental facts — 
something which will be true not only in all your 
experience under similar circumstances, but in the 
experience of all people under similar circum- 
stances. We have just been considering an exam- 
ple of a law of mental facts — that intense feeling, 
whether of pleasure or pain, cannot exist along 
with concentration of mind on another subject. 
We may then define Psychology as the science 
which seeks to ascertain mental facts and the laws 
which govern them. 

If you understand what a mental fact is you 
will see, of course, that you can study them not 
only in yourself, but in other people, and if you 
understand the definition of Psychology you will 
see that you cannot limit yourself to your own 
mental facts in studying this subject. Psychol- 
ogy, we have just seen, aims at general knowledge 
of mind, and if you confine yourself to your own 
mental facts you cannot be sure that your knowl- 
edge is general. 

But can you study the mental facts of other 
people's experiences in the same way as you can 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 39 

your own? Try it and see. As a teacher you 
often need to know whether your pupils are attend- 
ing to you or whether they understand you. Can 
you find out in the same way that you can learn 
whether or not you are attending? Plainly not ; 
you learn whether or not you are attending simply 
by looking within your own mind. The word which 
means looking within is introspection, and the ad- 
jective, introspective seems to me, therefore, to de- 
scribe best the way or mode or method in which 
you study the mental facts of your own experience. 
But you will never learn anything about the mental 
facts of other people by means of the introspective 
method. When you study other people you notice 
their looks and actions. Many teachers think they 
can tell whether their pupils are attending to them 
without asking them questions. They look or act 
as though they were attending, and so the teachers 
who believe this conclude they are. Conclude, I 
say. Note the" word carefully. It denotes a pro- 
cess of reasoning, and when we study the mental 
facts of other people's experience we have to do it 
by processes of reasoning, by acts of inference. It 
may seem strange to you, but you do not know that 
there are any other people in the world except by 



40 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

a process of reasoning. When you say you see a 
man, you mean or would mean if you had in mind 
the exact truth, that you have sensations of color, 
and from this infer the presence of a human being, 
like yourself. And when you see this human being 
laugh you infer that he experiences the mental fact 
called amusement, just as you are conscious of 
doing when you laugh. All that you learn of any 
human being you learn by reasoning — by infer- 
ence. As, then, we called the method of studying 
our own minds the introspective method, since we 
study them by looking directly within, so we may 
call the method of studying the mental facts of 
others the inferential, since we do it by processes 
of inference. 

And whatever you learn about other people's 
minds, whether you learn it from what you see 
them do or what you read of them, you learn 
by means of the inferential method. When you 
learn how Washington exposed ' himself when 
Braddock's army was routed and at the battle of 
Princeton, you infer that he was brave precisely as 
you would if you had seen him. 

I have said that the introspective method is 
the method we use in studying our own mental 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 4 1 

facts; that needs qualification. It is possible for 
us to study our own mental facts by means of the 
inferential method. Were you ever unable to re- 
member your motive for doing a certain thing? 
People often are. They say, "I do not know how 
I came to do that ' In such cases, you can not 
learn your motive by the introspective method. 
You must learn it, if you learn it at all, by the in- 
ferential method, by reasoning out the motive 
that induced you to act as you did. 

The introspective and inferential methods 
then are the two methods of studying mental 
facts. You can use the introspective method with- 
out the inferential, but you can not use the infer- 
ential without the introspective. When you infer 
that people have such and such mental facts under 
such and such circumstances, it is because you 
have the same mental facts under similar circum- 
stances. When you infer that a man is amused 
when he laughs, it is because you know by intro- 
spection that you are amused when you laugh. If 
you had never been amused, the laughter of other 
people would not suggest the idea that they are 
amused. And in like manner, if you never had 

had any experience of sorrow r , the tears of other 
4 



42 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

people would not have any meaning to you. And 
yet, although the inferential method is based on 
the introspective method, as we have already seen, 
we must enlarge our knowledge of mind not only 
by using the introspective method, but also by 
using the inferential method. For if we' confine 
our study to our own mental facts, we shall not 
know whether or not our conclusions are true of 
the minds of other people ; and if they are not, 
they form no part of Psychology. 

Each of these methods, as Mr. Sully points 
out, has its peculiar difficulties. The results 
reached by means of the inferential method are al- 
ways more or less uncertain. If you have ever 
made a thorough study of the history of any great 
man you have doubtless had an excellent illustra- 
tion of this. While different historians generally 
agree substantially as to the actions of men, they 
differ very widely in their interpretations of those 
actions. Federalist historians, and those who sym- 
pathize with them, for example, usually regard Jef- 
ferson as a demagogue, while Democratic histor- 
ians regard him as a sincere and devoted patriot. 
The reason, of course, is that using the inferential 
method the one explained his actions by one set of 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 43 

mental facts, the other by another set. The great 
difficulty with the introspective method is that a 
mental fact vanishes as soon as you attempt to ex- 
amine it by introspection. The feeling of amuse- 
ment, of course, is a mental fact. The next time 
you are amused suppose you try to analyze the feel- 
ing. Some Psychologists say that it consists in 
part of a feeling of superiority. Suppose you 
make a study of your experience, in order to see 
whether they are right. I think if you do, you 
will find your amusement vanishing. Or suppose 
you try to see what sort of a mental fact pity is. 
Some Psychologists hold that it is a state of 
pleasure. If the next time you find yourself 
pitying any one, you examine your experience 
to see what pity is, I think you will find your 
pity gone. If the nature of flowers were such 
that they cease to exist the moment one begins to 
observe them closely, the study of Botany would 
exactly illustrate the difficulty of studying Psychol- 
ogy by means of the introspective method. 

LIST OF QUESTIONS. 

i. What kind of mental facts constitutes the 
science of Psychology ? 



44 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

2. Illustrate your answer. 

3. What is a law of mental facts ? Illustrate. 

4. (a) State, (b) explain, and (c) illustrate the 
two ways of studying mental facts. 

5. Show that you can study your own expe- 
ience by means of the inferential method. 

6. Which of these two methods depends on 
the other, and why ? 

7. State the difficulties of the inferential 
method. Illustrate. 

8. State the difficulties of the introspective 
method. Illustrate. 




LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 45 

LESSON V. 

WHAT ARE WE CONSCIOUS OF? 

N the last lesson I tried to explain the two 
ways, or modes, or methods of studying 
mental facts. You can study the facts of 
your own experience directly — by looking within 
your own mind ; you can study the facts of other 
people's experience — and in some cases of your 
own — indirectly ; that is the whole of it. 

Since I wrote the last lesson I have come 
across such an excellent illustration of the inferen- 
tial method and of its difficulties that I am sure you 
will pardon me for quoting it at length. This is 
the passage : " It is difficult for the civilized man 
and the savage to understand each other. As a 
rule, the one does not know what the other is think- 
ing about. " And then speaking of Eliot, and what 
the Indians thought about him, the author, John 
Fiske, goes on : " His design in founding his vil- 
lages of Christian Indians was in the highest de- 
gree benevolent and noble ; but the heathen Indians 
could hardly be expected to see anything in it but 



46 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

a cunning scheme for destroying them. Eliot's 
converts were for the most part from the Massa- 
chusetts tribe, the smallest and weakest of all. 
The Plymouth converts came chiefly from the tribe 
next in weakness, the Pokanokets or Wampanoags. 
The more powerful tribes — Narragan setts, Nip- 
mucks, and Mohegans — furnished very few con- 
verts. When they Saw the white intruders gath- 
ering members of the weakest tribes into villages 
of English type, and teaching them strange gods 
while clothing them in strange garments, they 
probably supposed that the pale faces were simply 
adopting these Indians into their white tribe as a 
means of increasing their military strength. At 
any rate, such a proceeding would be perfectly in- 
telligible to the savage mind, whereas the nature 
of Eliot's design lay quite beyond its ken. As the 
Indians recovered from their supernatural dread of 
the English, and began to regard them as using 
human means to accomplish their ends, they must, 
of course, interpret their conduct in such light as 
savage experience could afford. It is one of the 
commonest things in the world for a savage tribe 
to absorb weak neighbors by adoption, and thus in- 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 47 

crease its force preparatory to a deadly assault upon 
other neighbors."* 

The Indians, of course, were not students of 
Psychology, and yet the way in which Mr. Fiske 
supposes them to reason about the motives of the 
Apostle Eliot is an exact illustration of the infer- 
ential method. And precisely as they made a mis- 
take because their experience gave them no clue 
to his motives, so you and I will be sure to make 
mistakes when we are reasoning about people 
whose experience is widely different from ours. 
For our own experiences, the mental facts of 
w r hich each of us is conscious, are the only key 
with which we can unlock the door that separates 
us from the mental facts of other people. And 
this, it seems to me, brings out quite clearly a fact 
to which I have already called your attention, and 
that is, that the inferential method is based upon 
the introspective. As the savages thought that 
Eliot was making converts in order to increase his 
military strength, because they frequently ab- 
sorbed w T eak neighbors for that purpose, so every 
one not only does but must interpret the actions 

"The Beginnings of New England; or the Puritan Theocracy in its 
Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty. By John Fiske. 



48 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

of other people by the facts of which he is con- 
scious, the facts which he learns by means of the 
introspective method. I hope that it is unneces- 
sary for me to repeat that the great reason why it 
is important for you as teachers to study Psychol- 
ogy, is that you may learn more of the minds of 
your pupils, and I think you see that the method 
by means of which you must study them is the 
inferential. You must observe their actions and 
conversation, note their likes and dislikes, their 
amusements, their games, the books they read — 
everything, in short, that may throw light on their 
minds, if you would get that knowledge o® them 
that will enable you to teach them well. Do not 
rely on any knowledge of the mind you can get 
from this or any other book. Indeed, a good book 
on Psychology is like a guide in a strange city — 
useful chiefly in telling you where to look. But 
as a guide can show nothing to a blind man, so a 
writer on Psychology can be of little use to his 
readers unless they persistently verify his state- 
ments by a study of their own experiences and by 
a study of the minds of those around them. 

Since the inferential method is based on the 
introspective, it is exceedingly important for us to 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 49 

know exactly what we can learn by means of the 
introspective method. If you were building a 
house I am sure you would be especially careful 
about the foundation. You would want it all 
strong and well made, but I think you would take 
particular pains to see that there was no flaw in 
the foundation. No matter how strong and fine 
and beautiful the rest of the house might be, you 
would feel that if the foundation was weak, the 
whole thing might come tumbling down about 
you any day. Now, if you will think quite care- 
fully,* you will see that what you learn by means 
of the introspective method — what you are con- 
scious of, I mean — is the foundation of nearly 
everything you know and believe. What you 
know about History, Geography, Grammar, Arith- 
metic — everything, in a word, even the common- 
est facts ot every-day life — is based at last for the 
most part on what you are conscious of. For 
though the inferential method of which I have 
been speaking is only a method of studying mind 
by inference, still it is plain that not only the men- 
tal facts of other people, but everything else which 
we are not conscious of w T e must learn by infer- 
ence, unless, indeed, there is some other way of 



50 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

knowing things directly besides consciousness. 
There are, indeed, some very great men who 
think that there is. They admit, of course, that 
all we know, we know either directly or indirectly. 
But they think that there are two kinds of direct 
knowledge — conscious or introspective knowledge, 
and what they call intuitive knowledge. They 
would represent the matter in this way : 

( j. . f conscious, 
Knowledge : < ' \ intuitive. 

( indirect.- 

Hence, before going on, I think I must try to 
give you some idea of what they mean by intuitive 
knowledge, although I will tell you frankly that 
you cannot hope to understand what I or any one 
else may say in explaining it, unless you are wil- 
ling to do some very hard thinking. 

Let me ask you then if anything can happen 
without a cause. Certainly not, you will say. 
" Are you sure of it?" 

"Sure of what?" 

" That nothing can happen without a cause." 

" Certainly I am ; I am as sure of it as I am 
that I live." 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 5 1 

" Would you be willing to state it in this way : 
Everything that happens must have a cause ? " 

" Yes, to say Nothing can happen without a 
cause, and Everything that happens must have a 
cause, mean the same thing. " 

" And you are sure that everything that hap- 
pens must have a cause?" 

"Certainly." 

" But consider, everything means a good many 
things ; it means what happens a very long way 
off, what happens on the fixed star Sirius and on 
the remotest star in the universe ; it means what 
happened a long time ago. Are you certain, abso- 
lutely certain that every event, no matter where or 
when, must have a cause?" 

" I am as certain, I repeat, as I am that I live." 

" But how are you certain of it?" 

At this point, I think you would stop to think. 
And if you said that you knew it by reasoning, I 
think you would take it back when I called your 
attention to the fact that if you know it by reason- 
ing, you have no business to be so certain of it. 
Reasoning can not justify you in going so far be- 
yond your experience to the beginning of time 
and the bounds of space, so to speak. Because all 



52 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

the events you know of have had causes, a mere 
process of reasoning can not warrant you in being 
certain that every event must have a cause. But 
no matter how clearly you may come to see that 
reasoning can never give you the right to be cer- 
tain that every event must have a cause, you con- 
tinue to be certain all the same. But if you do not 
know it by reasoning, you must know it directly. 
There are but two kinds of knowledge, indirect 
and direct, and if we know anything which we 
have not learned indirectly or by a process of rea- 
soning, we must know it directly. Let me restate 
that: You know that every event must have a 
cause ; you could not have learned it by a process 
of reasoning, or indirectly ; consequently, you must 
have learned it directly. But what kind of direct 
knowledge is it? It is an intuition, say those great 
men who believe in intuitive knowledge, a self- 
evident truth, and, therefore, known to us without 
any process of reasoning, although we are not con- 
scions of it. Here are some more examples of 
what they call intuitions : Two straight lines can 
not inclose a space ; a straight line is the shortest 
distance between two points ; if equals are added 
to equals the sums will be equals ; if equals are 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 53 

subtracted from equals, the remainders will be 
equals; and, indeed, all the axioms of geometry. 

I think there are intuitions; in other words, 
things that we know directly without being con- 
scious of them. But I recommend you not to 
allow yourself to have any opinion about it until 
you have studied the matter very thoroughly. 
You have no business to say that you will believe 
this or that, in this case, because some one else 
does, since the great men of the world have 
thought differently about it. What I have been 
trying to do is, not to make you believe that there 
is, or is not, intuitive knowledge, but to explain 
what is meant by it. 

LIST OF QUESTIONS. 

1. Give an illustration of the difficulties of the 
inferential method. 

2. Show by means of the illustration that the 
inferential method is based on the introspective. 

3. Which method must you use in studying 
children, and why is it important for you to study 
them? 

4. What sort of knowledge of mind can you 
get from the mere study of books ? 



54 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

5. What are the two kinds of direct knowl- 
edge? 

6. What is intuitive knowledge ? 

7. Give examples. 

8. Do you believe we have intuitive knowl- 
edge; and, if so, why? 




LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 55 

LESSON VI 

WHAT ARE WE CONSCIOUS OF? 



N the last lesson I tried to show you that in 
the opinion of some thinkers, there are two 
kinds of direct knowledge — what we are conscious 
of and intuitions. I explained intuitions as self- 
evident truths of which we are not conscious, 
although, since they are self-evident, we know 
them just as directly as we do of the facts of 
which we are conscious. 

If there are intuitions, they and the facts 
of which we are conscious constitute the founda- 
tion of everything we believe. If there are no in- 
tuitions, then these conscious facts by themselves 
* make up the basis of everything we believe. For 
this reason, as I told you in the last lesson, it is of 
the utmost importance to find out what we are 
conscious of. To suppose we are conscious of 
something which we are not conscious of is like 
putting into the foundation of a building a piece 
of inferior material, something which does not be- 
long there at all, and which is perhaps too poor to 



56 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

put in any part of the building whatever. What 
then are we conscious of? 

To answer this question we must first get as 
clear an idea as we can of what that kind of knowl- 
edge is which we call conscious knowledge. For 
to ask what we are conscious of, is to ask what we 
know in precisely the same way, with the same kind 
and degree of certainty as we do the facts which 
every one admits we are conscious of. When Co- 
lumbus first came to this country, if he had been 
told that a lot of animals which he saw were buf- 
faloes, then in order to learn what other animals 
were buffaloes he won Id have been obliged to learn 
what other animals were exactly like the buffaloes 
he knew in all essential particulars. As we are 
conscious of those facts which we have agreed 
to call mental facts, in order to learn whether we 
are conscious of any other kinds of facts, we plainly 
have to learn whether we know anything else in 
the same way, with the same kind and degree of 
certainty, as we know these facts, which every one 
admits we are conscious of. What, then, is that 
kind of knowledge which we call conscious knowl- 
edge? 

Have you ever been in pain ? Suppose that 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 57 

while you were writhing in agony, some one had 
asked you if you were sure you had any pain. 
How do you think you would have answered the 
question, if, indeed, you had possessed the pa- 
tience to answer it at all? You would have said, 
I think, that your certainty was so great that it 
could be no greater. Put so much water into a 
glass and not another drop — not an atom more can 
you make it hold. So you would have said, cer- 
tainty beyond or greater than yours it was impos- 
sible for any conscious being to have. " But may 
you not be deceived; may not your pain be a mere 
illusion, like the experiences of your dreams?" 
your questioner might have asked. u Deceived as 
to being in pain, when I am literally writhing in 
agony? No! I know it so absolutely that I know 
that I can not be mistaken. There is much that 
I believe that I realize I may be mistaken in. But 
this is certainty; certainty that admits no doubt; 
certainty that makes doubt an absurdity and an 
impossibility. " Conscious knowledge, then, is ab- 
solutely certain knowledge ; knowledge so certain 
as to make doubt an absurdity and an impossi- 
bility. Instead, then, of asking whether there are 

any other kinds of facts except mental facts which 
5 



58 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

we are conscious of, we can put the question in 
this form : Is there anything, except mental facts, 
which we know with such absolute certainty that 
it is impossible to doubt it? 

Perhaps while I am writing this lesson, you 
are taking a walk. As you glance at the stars 
shining so brightly above you, you think perhaps 
of the subject of your last lesson, and ask yourself 
if >ou really are conscious of them? Do you, as 
you see those little twinkling points of light in the 
heavens above you, know that they exist, so cer- 
tainly, so absolutely, as to make doubt an impossi- 
bility ? 

You doubtless know that the fixed stars — 
nearly all of the stars we see — are almost incon- 
ceivably far away. They are so far away that 
astronomers never think of stating their distance 
from us in miles. Instead of telling us how far 
they are from us by telling us the number of miles 
they are distant, they tell us how long it takes light 
to travel from them to us. Now light travels about 
180,000 miles in a second and the nearest of the 
fixed stars is so far away that it takes light three 
years to come from it to us. Suppose, then, that 
the nearest fixed star had been destroyed two years 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 59 

and a half ago. Would you see it to-night? Cer- 
tainly, just as you see any other star, for the light 
that strikes your eyes as you look at it, left it two 
years and a half ago — six months before it was 
destroyed. And for the same reason you would 
see it to-morrow night, and the next, and so on for 
six months. Night after night for six months, you 
would see the star shining above you although it 
did not exist at all ! When, then, I ask if you 
know that the stars exist as you look at them, evi- 
dently the most you can say is that they do unless 
they have been destroyed since the light left them 
by which you now see them. But if that is your 
answer, you cannot say that you know that they 
exist so absolutely as to make doubt an impossibil- 
ity for you do not know that they have not been 
destroyed since the light left them which enables 
you to see them. Therefore, you are not conscious 
of them. 

"But at any rate," perhaps you w 7 ill say, U I 
am conscious of the objects about me. I take a 
walk and I see the beautiful bouquets of autumn 
adorning the hill sides. I see the fields stretching 
out before me and here and there a farmer busy at 
work. As I mark how the leaves of the hedge 



60 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

were nipped by last night's frost, a rabbit suddenly 
leaps from under my feet and I wish for my gun as 
he fairly flies away from me. "Surely," you will 
say, "you will admit that I am conscious of these 
things ?" 

Are you ? Put the question to yourself. Ask 
yourself if you k?tow that these things exist so ab- 
solutely that doubt is an impossibility. Do you 
like to go hunting? If so, I am sure you have 
dreamed of standing behind a trusty pointer, gun 
in hand ready to take the first quail that made its 
appearance above the weeds. And while you were 
in the midst of your excitement you awoke per- 
haps to find that you had neither dog nor gun — 
to find that you had been hunting only in a dream. 
What of it, you ask ? This : A certainty quite as 
great as, indeed indistinguishable from, your 
waking certainties, proved untrustworthy; may 

not your waking certainties be unreliable? You 
will not, of course, imagine that I doubt that 
I see and hear the various things which I seem 
to see and hear, or that I am trying to make you 
doubt them. I am simply trying to show you 
that you do not know them with the same abso- 
lute certainty that you do the mental facts of your 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 6 1 

experience, and that, therefore, you are not con- 
scious of them. 

It seems to me there is another point of view 
from which you may see it even more clearly. 
What do you, what does any one, know about this 
universe? Very little indeed. The more power- 
ful we make our telescopes, the bigger the universe 
seems to be, the more it seems to us there is no end 
to it. The more powerful we make our micro- 
scopes, the more we learn of its infinitesimalness. 
Just think what poor, weak, ignorant creatures we 
are, feeling our way out into this infinite universe 
with our poor minds, and then tell me : Do you 
know that nowhere in this universe does anything 
exist of sufficient power to make us think we see, 
hear, smell, touch, and taste objects except objects 
themselves ? I do not, and I do not believe you do. 

But these arguments, conclusive as they seem 
to me to be, are not the considerations which have 
most weight with me. Simply by looking into my 
own mind I know that I do not know the existence 
of the objects about me with the same kind and de- 
gree of certainty that I do the mental facts I am 
conscious of, and that, therefore, I am not conscious 
of them. If you think you are, permit me to ask 



62 WESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

you to consider the force of the arguments I have 
called your attention to above, and because, of 
their force, to hold your judgment in suspense until 
you have had more experience in the study of men- 
tal facts. You would take the opinion of a sailor 
as to the character of a distant object at sea in 
preference to your own, simply because of his 
more extended experience. Inasmuch as trained 
Psychologists, almost without exception, contend 
that we are not conscious of the objects about us, I 
ask you to hold your judgment in suspense until 
you have studied the subject long enough to give 
you a right to an opinion. 

And it seems to me equally clear that we are 
not conscious of our own bodies. A man with an 
amputated limb often feels pain in the amputated 
limb exactly as he does in the limb that is not 
amputated. But he can not be conscious of the 
amputated limb. You admit that. You admit 
that a man can not be conscious of a leg that has 
been buried for months. Well, if he seems to be 
conscious of the amputated member and is not, he 
has no reason to believe that he is conscious of a 
member that is not amputated because he seems 
to be. 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 63 

Hence I think we may conclude that we know 
nothing else with the same kind and degree of 
certainty as we do the facts of which we are con- 
scious ; and that, therefore, we are conscious of 
nothing else. 

LIST OF QUESTIONS. 

i. What was the object of the last lesson ? 

2. What is the foundation of all we know 
and believe ? 

3. What kind of knowledge have we of our 
own mental facts ? 

4. Why do I ask that question ? 

5. Are you conscious of the stars? 

6. Give your reason for your answer. 

7. Are you unconscious of the objects about 
you? 

8. Give your reasons for your answers. 

9. Are you conscious of your body ? 




64 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

LESSON VII. 

ATTENTION. 

E have seen that conscious knowledge is 
that knowledge w T hich we have of those 
mental facts which we know directly. I 
have already told you that there are mental facts of 
which we are not conscious. You remember the 
example — a student intent upon a book and not 
hearing the clock strike till a moment after. What 
is the explanation of such facts ? The attention of 
the student was so fixed upon his book — his entire 
consciousness was so concentrated upon it — that 
there was no consciousness left for the sensation. 
Thus you see that the sensations of which we are 
conscious depend upon attention. In his Mental 
Physiology, Carpenter gives some remarkable ex- 
amples of this. For instance : u Before the intro- 
duction of chloroform, patients sometimes went 
through severe operations without giving any sign 
of pain and afterwards declared that they felt none : 
having concentrated their thoughts by a powerful 
effort of abstraction, on some subject which held 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 65 

them engaged throughout." "The writer has fre- 
quently begun a lecture, whilst suffering neuralgic 
pain so severe as to make him apprehend that he 
would find it impossible to proceed ; yet no sooner 
has he, by a determined effort, fairly launched 
himself into the stream of thought, than he has 
found himself continuously borne along without 
the least distraction, until the end has come, and 
the attention has been released ; when the pain 
has recurred with a force that has overmastered all 
resistance, making him wonder how he could have 
ever ceased to feel it." A similar experience in 
the case of Sir Walter Scott is thus recorded by his 
biographer: "John Ballantyne (whom Scott, 
while suffering under a prolonged and painful ill- 
ness employed as his amanuensis) told me that 
though Scott often turned himself on his pillow 
with a groan of torment, he usually continued the 
sentence in the same breath. But when dialogue 
of peculiar animation was in progress, spirit seem- 
ed to triumph altogether over matter — he arose 
from his couch and walked up and down the room, 
raising and lowering his voice and, as it were, act- 
the parts. It was in this fashion that Scott pro- 
duced the far greater portion of the " Bride of 



66 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

Iyammermoor," the whole of the " Legend of Mon- 
trose^ and almost the whole of " Ivanhoe." 

Also, what we perceive depends upon atten- 
tion. Let a botanist and geologist take the same 
walk — and the botanist will see the flowers and 
the geologist the rocks, simply because each sees 
what he attends to. The next time you take a 
walk go along the most familiar road in your 
neighborhood and see if you can't discover some- 
thing new to you — some tree or shed that has been 
there all the time. I have often had that experi- 
ence. The reason is that these unperceived ob- 
jects were not attached to. 

What we remember depends upon what we 
attend to. Have you ever thought of it? Most 
of our past lives is a perfect Sahara of forgetful- 
ness — blank, bleak, barren — swallowed up in ob- 
livion. But here and there gleam little green 
spots of memory, little oases in the midst of the 
mighty desert of the past. How is this? The 
things which we remember are the things which 
we attend to. Talk to an old man about his past 
life and you will find that the events of the last 
year he but dimly remembers ; but when he speaks 
of his boyhood, the incidents of the time crowd 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 67 

themselves upon him as though they had hap- 
pened but yesterday. In that far-off happy time, 
when his heart was light and his mind was free 
from care, the most trivial events received a de- 
gree of attention sufficient to stamp them on his 
memory forever. 

What we recollect depends upon what we at- 
tend to. (Recollecting is remembering by an act 
of will. All recollecting is remembering, but all 
remembering is not recollecting. Recollecting is 
a kind of remembering.) What do you do when 
you try to recall the name of a friend which has 
slipped your memory for the moment? You think 
of — attend to the thought of — how he looks, of his 
dress, of some peculiarity in his manner, of the 
first letter of his name, of some place where you 
saw him — of something connected with him — un- 
til, by-and-by, his name flashes into your mind. 
All you did, you notice, was to attend to certain 
thoughts in your mind. 

What conclusions you reach depend upon 
what you attend you. To Newton, sitting in his 
garden, the fall of an apple suggested the law of 
gravitation. Why ? Because he fixed his attention 
upon the resemblance between the fall of the apple 



68 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

from the tree and the revolution of the moon around 
the earth. The chief difference between the man 
of great reasoning powers and the ordinary man is 
that the former notices remote resemblances — re- 
semblances that escape the attention of the latter. 
What we feel depends upon attention. The same 
author already quoted from, Carpenter, gives some 
remarkable illustrations of this : /The celebrated 
German mathematician, Gauss, while engaged in 
one of his most profound investigations, was inter- 
rupted by a servant, who told him that his wife (to 
whom he was known to be deeply attached, and 
who was suffering from a severe illness) was worse. 
" He seemed to hear what was said, but either he 
did not comprehend it, or immediately forgot it, 
and went on with his work. After some little time, 
the servant came again to say that his mistress was 
much worse and to beg that he would come to her 
at once; to which he replied, 'I will come pres- 
ently.' Again he relapsed into his previous train 
of thought, entirely forgetting the intention he had 
expressed, most probably without having distinctly 
realized to himself the import either of the com- 
munication or of his answer to it. For not long 
afterwards when the servant came again and as- 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 69 

sured him that her mistress way dying, and that if 
he did not come immediately, he would probably 
not find her alive, he lilted up his head and calmly 
replied: 'Tell her to wait until I come ' — a mes- 
sage he had doubtless often before sent, when 
pressed by his wife's request for his presence w r hile 
he was similarly engaged."/ 

What we will likewise depends upon attention. 
Suppose a boy has a lesson to get, and another boy 
invites him to go fishing. Will* he go or will he 
stay and get his lesson ? That depends on what he 
attends to. If he allows his mind to dw T ell on the 
fun he will have, if he does not permit himself to 
think of the consequences of neglecting his work, 
he will go. But if he keeps his mind firmly fixed 
on the consequences ; if he vividly realizes the dis- 
pleasure of his parents, the disapprobation of his 
teacher, the probability of losing his place in his 
class, he will stay. 

* This brief survey will enable you to form some 
idea of the importance of the part which attention 
plays in our mental life. I think you can see that 
the chief difference between the educated and the 
uneducated man is the greater capacity of the 
former for close, continuous, concentrated atten- 



JO WESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

tion. Some writers indeed have gone so far as to 
say that genius depends entirely on the power to 
concentrate the attention. Newton thought that 
the sole difference between himself and ordinary 
men consisted in his greater power of attention. 
This, I think, is an exaggeration. But however 
this may be I think that the importance of training 
the attention can scarcely be over-estimated. 

How can we train the attention of our pupils ? 
Precisely as we cultivate any other power of their 
minds — by getting them to attend. Our pupils 
learn to observe by observing, and to think by 
thinking and to attend by attending. We never 
make the mistake of assuming that our pupils have 
a high degree of reasoning power when they first 
go to school — that they are capable of solving 
difficult problems in arithmetic, or understanding 
abstract statements in grammar — and it is just as 
absurd for us to suppose that they are capable of 
continuous attention, and yet we are prone to do 
that. "Because people are attentive, when strong 
interest is roused" — says Edward Thring — "there 
is a common idea that attention is natural, and in- 
attention a culpable fault. But the boy's mind is 
much like a frolicking puppy, always in motion, 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 7 1 

restless, but never in the same position two min- 
utes together, when really awake. Naturally his 
body partakes of this unsettled character. Atten- 
tion is a lesson to be learned, and quite as much a 
matter of training as any other lesson. A teacher 
will be saved much useless friction if he acknowl- 
edges this fact, and instead of expecting atten- 
tion which he will not get, starts at once with the 
intention of teaching it." How can he teach it? 
That question I intend to try to answer in the next 
lesson. 

LIST OF QUESTIONS. 

i. Show and illustrate that the sensations of 
which we are conscious depend upon attention. 

2. Show and illustrate that what we perceive 
depends upon attention 

3. Show and illustrate that what we remem- 
ber depends upon attention. 

4. Show and illustrate that what we recollect 
depends upon attention. 

5. Show and illustrate that what we believe 
depends upon attention. 

6. Show and illustrate that what we feel de- 
pends upon attention. 

7. Show and illustrate that what we will de- 
pends upon attention. 




72 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

LESSON VIII. 

ATTENTION. 

the last lesson, I tried to give you some 
idea of the overshadowing importance of 
the part which attention plays in our men- 
tal life. I wanted to make you feel that you must 
get the attention of your pupils or you can not 
teach them. The world which you know is the 
world you have attended to ; so far as you have 
not attended to it, it does not exist for you. And 
in precisely the same way, when your pupils are 
not attending to you, you do not exist for them; 
their minds, for the time being, are no more 
affected by you than if you had never lived. 

But what is attention? It is the concentra- 
tion of mind upon some subject to the exclusion 
of everything else. When you say to your pupils, 
Give me your attention, you mean that you want 
them to stop thinking of the game they played at 
recess, of the book they read last night, of every- 
thing except what you are saying. 

Would you expect to get the attention of a 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 73 

class of little folks by asking for it? Would you 
try to induce tliem to study by talking to them 
about the importance of an education? I don't 
think you would ; you would instinctively feel that 
it would be of no use. You feel that to get the 
attention of very young children, you must pre- 
sent to them something which is attractive in and 
of itself. Why is it that you do not feel the 
same way in the case of older children? Be- 
cause, you know that they can give you a dif- 
erent kind of attention ; you know that their 
attention is, to some extent, under the control of 
their will. 

It thus appears that there are two kinds of 
attention — involuntary and voluntary. In invol- 
untary attention, we attend simply because of the 
attraction which the subject attended to has for the 
mind ; in voluntary attention, we attend through 
an exercise of the will. If you want a perfect 
illustration of the two kinds of attention in your 
own experience, take a book and try to study the 
next time some one begins to sing one of your 
favorite songs in your hearing. By a strong effort 
of will, you may succeed in putting your mind on 
your book for a moment, but the attractiveness of 

6 



74 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

the song will be pretty sure to make it impossible 
for you to keep it there. 

You will see the difference between them more 
clearly perhaps, if you realize that in the case of 
involuntary attention there is but one thing that 
influences the mind, and that is the thing attended 
to ; while in voluntary attention, there are two, 
the thing attended to, and some reason or motive 
we have for attending it. When you listen to a 
song simply because you like it, you attend invol- 
untarily ; when you study a lesson by an effort of 
will, you attend voluntarily. In the former case 
there were butrtwo things concerned, the mind and 
the song ; in the latter, there were three, the mind 
and the book and some reason you have for attend- 
ing to it, such as the desire to improve. 

In the early part of our mental life, we ai;e not 
capable of voluntary attention. We attend to this 
or that because it pleases us or gives us pain, because 
of its direct telation to our pleasure or pain. The 
power of involuntary attention grows by exercise. 
Less interesting and less attractive things get the 
power to draw our attention ; things uninteresting 
in themselves, begin to be interesting because of 
their relation to interesting things, and with this 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 75 

begins the exercise of voluntary attention. When 
a child begins to take an interest in the prepara- 
tions for his bath, he is very near the period when 
he can be induced to do this or that by the promise 
of a bath, and this influence of motives is exerted 
only in voluntary attention. 

But it should be carefully noted that when we 
acquire the power to attend voluntarily, we can 
not attend to anything for any length of time sim- 
ply by an effort of will. By an act of the will, we 
determine the direction in which the mind will 
look ; whether it will continue to look that way, 
depends on whether it sees anything interesting. 
Sully puts this very clearly : " By an act of will, I 
may resolve to turn my attention to something, 
say a passage in a book. But if after this pre- 
liminary process of adjustment of the mental eye, 
the object opens up no interesting phase, all the 
willing in the world will not produce a calm, set- 
tled state of concentration. The will introduces 
mind and object; it cannot force an attachment 
between them. No compulsion of attention ever 
succeeded in making a young mind cordially em- 
brace and appropriate by an act of concentration 
an unsuitable and, therefore, uninteresting sub- 



\ 



76 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

ject. We thus see that voluntary attention is 
not removed from the sway of interest. What it 
does is to determine the kind of interest which 
shall prevail at the moment." In other words, all 
that the will does is to put the mind on a particu- 
lar subject; if it stays there it is because the sub- 
ject attracts it. The will introduces the mind to 
the subject. But it will not converse with its new 
acquaintance for any length of time, unless it finds 
it interesting. 

And now you see why it is of such importance 
for you to interest your pupils. Unless you inter- 
est them, they cannot give you continuous atten- 
tion, and unless they attend to you, you might as 
well talk to their overcoats, to use one of Thring's 
illustrations, while their owners are playing ball. 

The great secret of interest is adaptation. 
Find out what your pupils like. Study them at 
play. See how they employ themselves when they 
can do what they please, and when you have found 
what they like you can interest them. You see 
them building houses in the sand ; take a hint from 
that and set them to moulding in sand the shapes 
of the various countries of the world. Do not wait 
until they have begun to study Geography in a 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 77 

systematic way. You can utilize their fondness for 
playing in the sand in fixing in their minds the 
shapes of the countries you will begin to teach them 
about later. You see them looking at pictures. 
Encourage them to do it. Give them pictures to 
look at which will serve some educational purpose. 
Perhaps you have had them mould the continent 
of South America ; show them pictures of its cities, 
of the people of the various countries. Tell them 
the names of the pictures ; as, this is Rio Janeiro, 
these are Peruvians. Children like to listen to 
stories. Tell them stories about Pizarro, and how 
he treated the Incas. I need not take the time to 
tell you how can turn their fondness for drawing, 
and for telling what they know, to account in sim- 
ilar ways. I am simply illustrating how you can 
teach them by adapting your instruction to them. 
Study them closely, carefully, constantly. Notice 
that they do not like to do anything long at a time, 
and vary your teaching accordingly. 

In such ways you can interest young children 
by getting them to do what they like to do, and 
you not only interest them, you teach them. You 
can get them to exercise their observing powers, 
and lay the foundation of a lasting interest in the 



78 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

birds and trees and flowers that are to be found in 
their neighborhood. The time so spent is an 
investment which will yield them a rich return in 
after days. 

No matter what grade of pupils you are dealing 
with, the secret of successful teaching still is 
adaptation. Have you ever noticed what life an 
energetic, lively boy can put in a dull game ? His 
interest and energy and enthusiasm are contagious. 
You can see examples of that everywhere. Go to 
an evening party and see sometimes how indus- 
triously every one is engaged in studying the figures 
of the carpet, and how all this changes when some 
one who is called the life of the company comes. 
Life of the company ! That is a very significant ex- 
pression. Remember how Sheridan put life into his 
retreating army at Winchester, so that they turned 
about and beat back a triumphantly advancing 
enemy. You can put life into your classes if you 
choose. You can bring to your recitations such an 
intensity of interest in your subject that the dull- 
est boy in your class will feel the glow of your en- 
thusiasm. I know very well that such enthusiasm 
is a gift of nature vouchsafed to but few teachers. 
But there is a degree of interest within the reach 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 79 

of everyone of us if we are willing to work for it. 
And it requires work. There is no danger of a 
lack of interest in our subjects if we study. And 
if you think you know so much about what you 
teach that it is not worth while for you to study it 
any more, that very fact proves that you are lack- 
ing in interest. But interest in your work is as es- 
sential to success in teaching as knowledge. 

For the cultivation of interest, I think what an 
English writer calls "freshness of mind" is of great 
importance. " To find the lesson oozing," he says, 
" as it were from your finger tips, to be so full of your 
subject that the question is not what to say, but 
what to leave out, and to feel so well and vigorous 
that your vivacity compels attention and interest, 
and makes the faces in front of you look bright 

contagiously that is to how prepare the lesson 

The story ( told by the Professor at the break- 
fast table, I think), of a tailor lamenting over a 
customer departing empty handed, ' that if it were 
not for a headache he would have a new coat on 
that back in spite of himself is freighted with 
truth. There is a magnetic influence passing 
from a healthy and, alert mind to all with whom it 
comes into contact ; that influence is the teacher's 



80 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

conjuring wand, and without it he will never 
bring the dry bones of education to life. It will 
readily be seen that no patent process for the pro- 
duction or maintenance of this influence can be 
found. It is best fostered by variety of life, by a 
wide experience of men and things (not at all an 
easy thing for one so closely tied as a teacher to 
attain), in short by anything that tends to keep 
the heart and mind open and to make life interest- 
ing. Teachers lead too often very dull lives and 
the dullness reacts on their pupils. Men and 
women who have to give out so much can hardly 
lead too full and rich and interesting lives. Their 
minds ought to be a store-house of thoughts and pic- 
tures and recollections, from which they can draw 
at will to enrich their lessons and to furnish the 
minds of their pupils." 

LIST OF QUESTIONS. 

i. Define attention. 

2. Explain the two kinds of attention. 

3. Illustrate the difference between them. 

4. Show that we cannot attend long merely 
by an effort of will. 

5. How would you interest primary pupils? 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 8 1 

6. How would you try to interest yourself? 

7. What is freshness of mind ? 

8. What can you do to get it ? 




82 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

LESSON IX.' 

ATTENTION. 

N the last lesson, I said that there are two 
kinds of attention — involuntary and volun- 
tary; that we attend involuntarily when 
the subject attended to attracts us in and of itself; 
voluntarily when we perceive the relation which 
the thing attended to has to some subject of in- 
trinsic interest. In other words, in involuntary 
attention, the thing attended to is the sole cause 
of attention ; in voluntary attention the thing at- 
tended to is not the source of attraction, but some- 
thing else is ; and we attend to the thing, not for 
its own sake, but for the sake of that something 
else. I also pointed out the fact that if voluntary 
attention is to be of much intellectual value, it 
must pave the way for involuntary attention. If 
the will resolutely turns the gaze of the mind upon 
a certain subject, points of interest may present 
themselves, before unnoticed, so* that voluntary 
attention may become involuntary. As the per- 
suasions of a friend may induce you to consent to 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 83 

be introduced to a person who does not attract 
you and whom you think you will not like, so the 
exertion of the will may induce you to attend to 
what you otherwise would not have attended to, 
because it possessed no attractions to such super- 
ficial glances as, without interest, are alone given, 
except in voluntary attention. And precisely as 
your new acquaintance may develop elements of 
attractiveness which you would have never known 
anything about if you had not consented to an 
'introduction, so an uninteresting subject maybe- 
come interesting, under the searching gaze of 
voluntary attention, which otherwise would have 
remained uninteresting forever. There are, then, 
two functions of voluntary attention: (1), to de- 
velop interests, to make us acquainted with inter- 
esting subjects which otherwise we should have 
remained ignorant of; (2), to give steadiness to the 
mind, to prevent it from going capriciously here 
and there under the influence of the interests that 
happen to be present at the particular moment. 

When we had reached this point of view, we 
were able to see why it is so important for us to 
interest our pupils. Interest is the source of in- 
voluntary attention, and voluntary attention, to be 



84 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

of much educational value must pass into involun- 
tary attention. 

When I said that the great secret of successful 
teaching consists in adaptation, it was only another 
way of repeating that successful teaching consists 
in supplying the conditions of mental activity. 
The mind has a variety of impulses. Our busi- 
ness is to put it in such a position that we can use 
those impulses to serve educational ends. Read 
the last lesson again carefully, and I think you 
will see that all the methods of adaptation which 
I suggested are means of using the impulses of our 
pupils to serve educational ends. That is the rea- 
son why I urged you to make such a careful study 
of your pupils — indeed of children generally. 
You need to be even on the alert to discover some 
impulse which you can turn to account. 

You know, of course, that you can keep the 
attention of your pupils better by asking them 
questions, than you can by doing all the talking 
yourself. When you are asking them questions, 
you are making the utmost use of the impulses of 
curiosity and activity. Children — little and big — 
like to learn things, and they like to act. Ask the 
right kind of questions, and you make them con- 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 85 

scious of their ignorance, you stimulate their curi- 
osity. But here, again, the necessity of studying 
the minds of your pupils presents itself. The 
curiosity of little children is very different from 
that of older pupils. A child asks a question, and 
before you have answered it he asks another about 
an entirely different thing. The only attention he 
can give is involuntary attention. His interest in 
. things in the form of curiosity is very slight, and 
so, like an active bird, he flits from this subject to 
that, never staying with one thing a minute at a 
time. But this, as Thring said, is one of the things 
which you want to teach — this power of atten- 
tion. And you will try to help him to attend more 
and more closely to the subject, and to acquire 
more and more power to follow out a line of 
thought. When he asks a second question before 
you have answered the first, you will neither show 
nor feel impatience — no more than the mother 
does that her child is born without teeth. You 
will ask him questions about the first thing — 
keeping his mind there as long as you think it 
safe, learning a lesson from the bird who does not 
encourage her young ones to make long flights the 
first time, contented with a little to-day, a little 



86 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

more to-morrow, until, in the maturity of its pow- 
ers, it can equal the mother bird. Realizing the 
feebleness of the curiosity of children, you will 
not expect from it any sustained efforts. You will 
be satisfied if you can make it a means of getting 
them to think a little, and learn a little, being sure 
that in this way you can lay the foundation for a 
deeper curiosity, and with this impulse to work 
with, you can get them to think more closely and 
acquire more knowledge. 

When you are dealing with older pupils you 
should make a different use of the principle of 
curiosity. If they have been well taught, it will 
be deeper; it will be strong enough to stimulate 
them to more laborious efforts. You can get their 
attention by asking questions which they can not 
answer, questions which will make them conscious 
of ignorance — of which they were unconscious be- 
fore. When you should answer the question, your 
own tact must determine. It often happens that 
a student has interest enough in a subject to be 
clearly conscious of the labyrinth of difficulties in 
which the questions of his teacher have involved 
him, but not enough to make him willing to un- 
dergo the labor of threading his way out. Now, 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 87 

while you ought not to remove difficulties that 
have not been realized, or which the pupil's in- 
terest might induce him to overcome, there are 
circumstances under which the clearing up of diffi- 
culties may greatly increase the pupil's interest, 
and thus put him in the way of a more vigorous 
and protracted exertion of his powers. When the 
subject under consideration lies before his mind, 
wrapped in a fog, a few direct, luminous, incisive 
statements from you, like a brisk wind, may clear 
away the fog and reveal the outlines of the coun- 
try, sharp and clear to your pupil's mind. 

You may thus give to him that experience 
that can be felt but can not be described ; that de- 
lightful consciousness of power which he realizes 
when, instead of groping in darkness in an un- 
known country, he finds himself at home, as it 
were, with the noonday sun to guide his footsteps. 
His feeling of weakness gives place to a feeling of 
power. Instead of feeling himself overborne and 
beaten back by a superior force, he is victor, and 
his enemies are flying, or, rather, annihilated be- 
fore him. This delightful experience, this step- 
ping from darkness into light, this transition from 
mental chaos and anarchy into a region of order 



88 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

and law, is your pupil's right, and becomes an ex- 
ceedingly powerful stimulus. 

So far, I have been talking, for the most part, 
about how to awaken an interest — the condition 
of involuntary attention ; but you should know 
how to get the voluntary attention of your pupils. 
M. Breal gives an excellent statement of some of 
the conditions of voluntary attention : 

" So far as possible, the teacher should keep 
his position, holding the class under his eyes and 
requiring that all eyes should be turned toward 
him. The instruction is not to begin until all the 
children have taken an erect and composed atti- 
tude. A rap on the table or a word agreed upon is 
the signal that the recitation is to begin. The 
questions should be addressed to the class as a 
whole ; and so the teacher will always first ask the 
question, and then will allow the pause necessary 
for finding the reply ; and only then will he name 
the pupil who is to reply. If the pupil begins by 
trying to find the reply after he has been called 
on, it is a proof of inattention. If the response 
made by a pupil is correct, it may be demanded 
again of a fellow-pupil. If it is faulty, it should 
be corrected by him. The important parts of the 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 89 

lesson are repeated in concert by the whole 
class. As soon as inattention appears, the teach- 
er stops, an excellent means of reanimating the 
class, but a means which should not be abused is 
to call np the class and reseat it at a word of 
command." 

Try, also, to commend the subject you are 
teaching to your pupils. Try to make them real- 
ize its importance. Many a boy*pays no attention 
to your explanations because he does not believe 
they amount to anything. The best way to meet 
this difficulty is to be sure that what you have to 
say is worth listening to, and when you are in doubt 
about it hold your peace. Be sure, also, that your 
pupils understand you. When you give an expla- 
nation call on some member of the class to repeat 
it. The knowledge that some one of them may be 
called on, will make them all listen more closely, 
and only by hearing them attempt to reproduce 
your explanation can you be sure that they under- 
stand you. And when you have done your best in 
these and all other directions to get their attention 
and still have failed, do not get angry, but be sure 
that somehow you have failed to do what might 
have been done, and use the first opportunity to 



90 WESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

make a thorough study of the matter to see if you 
can find what the difficulty is. 

LIST OF QUESTIONS. 

i. I say that voluntary attention ought to 
pave the way for involuntary attention : What do 
I mean by that ? 

2. Why can you keep the attention of a class 
better by asking them questions ? 

3. Describe the curiosity of children. 

4. Give illustrations from your own observa- 
tion. • 

5. How would you deepen their curiosity ? 

6. Do you sometimes ask older pupils ques- 
tions which you do not immediately answer ? 

7. How do you determine when it is best to 
answer them ? 

8. Mention some conditions of voluntary at- 
tention. 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 91 

LESSON X. 

KNOWING, FEELING AND WILLING. 




OME writers on Psychology say that there 
are three great divisions or departments of 
the mind : the intellect, the sensibility, and 
the will. By the intellect, they mean the mind as 
possessing and exercising the power to know ; by 
the sensibility, the mind as possessing and exer- 
cising the power to feel ; by the will, the mind as 
possessing and exercising the power to will. But, 
as we have agreed in our definition of Psychology 
to confine our attention to mental facts, instead of 
using the terms intellect, sensibility, and will, I 
shall speak of knowing, feeling, and willing — the 
same things under different names. 

The meaning of these terms will be plain, I 
think, without much explanation. When you see, 
hear, smell, touch, or taste anything, when you 
remember anything, when you reason out a con- 
clusion, you are said to know it. Inasmuch as all 
mental facts whatever are classed as knowing, 



92 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

feeling, or willing, we put some facts in the first 
class which at first sight would not seem to belong 
there. What we imagine, for example, is some- 
times true and sometimes false; the same is true 
of our beliefs, and, of course, of our reasonings 
also. And yet the imaginations and beliefs and 
reasonings which are not true are all classed as 
states of knowing. Why? Because, as mental 
facts, there is no difference between the act of 
reasoning that leads to a true conclusion and one 
that leads to a false conclusion ; and the same is 
true of false beliefs, whether produced by reason- 
ing or not, and also of those acts of the imagina- 
tion which are not in harmony with real things. 

When we come to discuss imagination and 
reasoning, I will illustrate this; but I think you 
can understand it now without illustration, if you 
will consider it carefully. 

Feeling is the general term for any pleasura- 
ble or painful state of consciousness. No matter 
how the pleasure or pain is produced, whether 
through the senses, as an agreeable or disagreeable 
odor, or a pleasant or unpleasant sight, or a pleas- 
ing melody or a harsh sound ; or through what is 
sometimes called the higher powers of the mind, 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 93 

as the pleasures of memory or hope, or the pain of 
disappointment or failure, it is in any case called 
feeling. 

Willing cannot be defined. But the thing it- 
self is perfectly well known to all of you who under- 
stand what voluntary attention is. When you try 
to put your mind on your book while some one 
within your hearing is talking about something 
that interests you, you are exercising your will. 
When you are lying in bed on a cold morning you 
often think about getting up some time before you 
do it. As long as you merely think about it, you 
lie there, but when you will to do it, you get up, 
although the act of willing is not getting up — it 
is rather that mental act which directly preceded 
and caused that series of physical facts which we 
call getting up. 

There is never a moment when you are awake 
in which you are not exercising your power to 
know. Generally, also, you have some state of 
feeling, more or less distinct, and that state of feel- 
ing generally causes the will to act more or less en- 
ergetically. 

But, although you are generally knowing and 
feeling and willing at -the same time, you cannot 



94 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

know intensely and feel or will intensely at the 
same time, or feel intensely, and know or will in- 
tensely at the same time, or will intensely and 
know or feel intensely at the same time. 

Some of the illustrations I gave you of the 
effects of attention will serve to illustrate this law 
of the mind also. When Carpenter was engaged 
in lecturing he forgot his pain. Why? Because 
pain is a feeling, and when he was lecturing he 
was exercising his powers to know very vigorously. 
A mad man is an insane man — one whose know- 
ing powers are disarranged. Why is it that we 
sometimes call an angry man mad ? Because 
anger is a state of intense feeling, and a man in 
such a state often does as foolish things as though 
he were insane. The expression, " wild with 
grief," has a similar significance, illustrates the 
same law. You have noticed, also, that you do not 
succeed very well with those studies which have so 
little interest for you as to make it necessary for 
you to put forth a great deal of effort to keep your 
mind on them. Why ? Because you have to will 
so energetically to keep your mind on them that 
there is little energy left for knowing. 

The practical rules which are based upon this 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 95 

law are so evident to you already that I need not 
enlarge on them. You know very well that when 
your pupils are amused they are not likely to study 
much. The reason is, that amusement, a pleasur- 
able feeling, is a hindrance to that concentration of 
mind which we call study — knowing. 

The law which I have been illustrating is 
called the opposition or antagonism of knowing, 
feeling, and willing. 

Notwithstanding this opposition there is an 
interdependence of knowing, feeling and willing. 
When you hurt your hand — feeling — you know 
that you hurt it, and you try to relieve the pain — 
willing. Sometimes you have what you call the 
"blues," you feel depressed without knowing why. 
Apart from that case and bodily pleasures and 
pains I think that you can see that all feeling de- 
pends upon knowing. What angers you or grieves 
you? Something you know. When your so-called 
friends backbite you it does not affect you until you 
know it ; the misfortune that overtakes your ab- 
sent friends does not trouble you until the news 
has reached you. The dependence of knowing or 
feeling, I have illustrated at great length in the 
lesson on attention. I tried to show you there 



96 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

how necessary interest is to attention — and that 
is only another way of stating the dependence of 
knowing, so far as it results from involuntary at- 
tention, upon feeling. The facts of voluntary at- 
tention again illustrate the dependence of the will 
on feeling. I will to do this or that because of 
some pleasure or benefit — and that when analyzed 
will be found to consist of some form of pleasure 
— which I hope to gain, or of some pain which I 
hope to shun. 

This fact of the interdependence of knowing, 
feeling and willing is of cardinal importance to the 
teacher. Teachers are coming to feel the impor- 
tance of knowing the contents of their pupils' 
minds in order that they may adapt their teaching 
to them. To go from the known to the unknown, 
is to make what the pupil knows a starting point 
from which to lead him to something he does not 
know. Plainly any attempt to explain the un- 
known will be a failure unless the explanation is 
made in terms known to the pupil. For this rea- 
son, intelligent teachers are ahvays trying to make 
a map of their pupils' minds, as it were, that they 
may learn what points they can help their pupils to 
start from in making- excursions into the unknown 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 97 

But there is another fact just as important 
which teachers are more likely to overlook. When 
you have arranged an excursion there is something 
else you must do before you can be sure it will be 
a success — you must see to it that people have a 
sufficient motive to go on it. So also when you 
have planned a mental excursion for your pupils, 
when you have found a place which they can start 
from, before you can be sure of their company, 
you must be sure that they have a sufficient mo- 
tive for going with you. Dropping the figure, it is 
not enough for you to explain things so that your 
pupils can understand you, you must see to it that 
they have a motive to make the necessary exertion. 
What wind is to a sailing-vessel, and water to a 
water-mill, and steam to a steam engine — that 
motives — feelings of some sort — are to all intellec- 
tual activity. It is not enough to build railroads 
and cars and steam-engines — coal must be mined 
and water must be converted into steam or the 
cars will never leave the depot. 

The clear perception of this truth and of the 
enormous difference in the educational value of 
the motives which you may make use of will give 
you a new test for determining the excellence of a 



98 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

school. You go into a school ; the order is perfect, 
the recitations well prepared. You say, that's a 
good school. Not so fast. Don't make up your 
mind about that until you have learned what mo- 
tives the teacher appealed to to get these results. 
Were the pupils quiet through fear? Then the 
school is not a good school, because the wrong 
motives are appealed to. Do they learn their 
lessons to avoid punishment, or as a result of emu- 
lation? Then again I say it is not a good school. 
Good teaching appeals to motives that will oper- 
ate not merely at school but through life. How 
long will the fear of punishment induce pupils to 
study? As long as there is a teacher to inflict 
punishment. How long will emulation influence 
them? As long as they have fellow-pupils to 
emulate. It is not indeed enough to make your 
instruction interesting. Volkman well says that 
the precept of modern Pedagogy is, " Instruct in 
such a way that an interest may awake and remain 
active for life."* 

LIST OF QUESTIONS. 

i. Define intellect, sensibility and will. 

* Quoted by Sully. 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 99 

2. What is meant by knowing, feeling and 
willing ? 

3. Why are erroneous reasonings classed as 
knowing ? 

4. What is meant by the opposition or antag- 
onism of knowing, feeling and willing? 

5. Illustrate it as far as you can from your 
own observation and experience. 

6. What is meant by the interdependence of 
knowing, feeling and willing? 

7. Illustrate that from your own observation 
and experience. 

8. What is the test of a good school ? 




IOO LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

LESSON XI. 

SENSATION AND PERCEPTION. 

N the last lesson, we saw that there are 
three great classes of mental facts, know- 
ing, feeling and willing. 

As all knowledge takes its rise in sensation, 
in discussing the knowing side of the mind, we 
naturally begin with that. 

What is a sensation? If a child taps a drum 
in your presence you have a sensation of sound. 
By tapping the drum he set the air in motion. 
The vibrating air coming into contact with the 
end of your auditory nerve, caused a change in it 
— some form of motion — and this caused a change 
in the adjacent particles and so on until the brain 
was reached when a change in it was followed by 
a mental fact which we call sensation. Every link 
in the chain, you will note, except the last one, is a 
physical fact — tapping of the drum, vibrating air, 
change in the nerve, change in the brain — these 
are all physical facts. All other sensations in like 
manner are preceded by a series of physical facts. 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY IOI 

Rays of light come into contact with or stimulate 
the optic nerve and cause a change in it, and this 
in the adjacent particles and so on until the brain 
is reached and change in it is followed by a sensa- 
tion of sight. Put your hand on an object, and a 
change takes place in the particles in the end of 
the nerves of touch of your hand, and a similar 
succession of physical facts terminate in sensation. 
If now I ask you to give me examples of sen- 
sation, you will be likely to say that the hearing of 
a drum, and the seeing of any object are examples 
of sensation — but they are not. Run over again 
that series of physical facts which result from the 
tapping of the drum — vibrating air, changes in 
the auditory nerve, change in the brain — and see 
if you cannot distinguish between the next link, 
the sensation, and the hearing of the drum. If 
you beat a drum in the presence of a new born 
babe do you think he will hear it? No, he will have 
a sensation of sound but he will not hear tlie drum. 
We may have sensations of sound and not hear 
anything, sensations of color, and not see any- 
thing, sensations of smell and not smell anything, 
sensations of touch and not touch anything, sensa- 
tions of taste and not taste anything. 



102 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

What do you mean when you say you see an 
apple? You mean, among other things, that you 
see a round object, good to eat, and with a pleas- 
ant odor when brought near the nose. Do you see 
its odor? Plainly, not; you learn the odor of 
things through the sense of smell. Do you see its 
taste? Again, no; you learn the taste of things 
through the sense of taste. Do you see its round- 
ness ? No ; you learn the shape of things by the 
sense of touch and the muscular sense. How, 
then, are you able to know by sight alone that an 
object before you has a certain shape and taste 
and odor? 

In order to answer that question, suppose you 
ask yourself what a man would know of an apple 
who saw one for the first time, and who had never 
heard of one before. He would know its shape, 
but he would know nothing of its odor and taste. 
Now, if he tastes and smells the apple, the next 
time he sees an object resembling it closely in 
looks, it will be likely to occur to him that it re- 
sembles it in taste and smell also ; in other words, 
that it is an apple. In other words, its color will 
be likely to suggest its taste and odor. 

If you will think of it carefully, I think you 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 103 

will see a difference between the experience of 
color which you have when you are looking at an 
apple and the thoughts of odor and taste which it 
suggests. The experience of color is a present 
sensation ; the thoughts of odor and taste which it 
suggests are recollections of past sensations of taste 
and smell. 

If this is clear, I think you can now under- 
stand the definition of sensation. A sensation is 
that simple mental fact which directly follows the 
last change in the brain in consequence of the 
stimulation of an incarrying nerve. (I mean by 
incarrying nerve, one that proceeds from the out- 
side of the body to the brain.) 

Note carefully the italicized words. I say 
"directly follows." Fix that firmly in mind and 
you will not confuse the sensation with what it 
suggests. The color of an apple suggests its taste 
and odor, but until you actually taste and smell it, 
its taste and smell are not sensations, because they 
do not directly follow the last change in the brain re- 
sulting from the stimulation of an incarrying nerve. 
The only thing that directly follows the last 
change in the brain is the sensation of color ; the 
thought of the taste and smell of the apple are 



104 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

the result of the sensation, so that this change in 
the brain makes you think of its color and taste 
through the sensation, or indirectly. 

If you bear in mind the significance of the 
word "simple'' it will help to save you from the 
same mistake. When you are seeing, hearing, 
touching and tasting things your experience is not 
simple. You have a sensation, and with it, the 
recollection of sensations which it suggests. 

Note carefully also that a sensation is a mental 
fact. In the third lesson you will remember that 
I defined a mental fact as one known or knowable 
to but one person directly and that the person ex- 
periencing it, while a physical fact is one that may 
be known to any number of persons. Now, as I 
have said already, the facts which immediately pre- 
cede a sensation are physical facts. Take the case 
we have already considered, a sensation of sound, 
caused by the beating of a drum. The beating of 
a drum is a physical fact, since any number of 
people can see it at the same time, and although 
you cannot say so much of the vibrating air, the 
reason is not because of the nature of the fact but 
because of defects in our senses. If our senses were 
more acute, a large number of people might feel 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 105 

the vibrations of air that result from the beating 
of a drum, and hence it is a physical fact. Of 
course, no one has ever seen the changes in the 
auditory nerve that result from the vibrations of 
the air, because, in the first place, the nerve itself 
can not be seen; and, in the second place, if it 
could, its particles are so exceedingly small that 
no changes in them could be seen. But here again 
the reason is not because of the nature of the fact, 
but of the conditions under which it exists, and of 
defects in our sense organs. Plainly, the same is 
true of the changes in the brain, which, like those 
in the auditory nerve, are physical facts. But di- 
rectly after those changes in the brain, perhaps, 
indeed contemporaneous with them — a fact occurs 
utterly unlike the series of facts which preceded 
it, a fact which, because of its very nature, is know- 
able only to the person experiencing it, and that 
fact is the sensation. 

If you clearly realize the difference between 
sensations and what they suggest, I think you can 
see' how we may have a sensation of sight and not 
see the object. If you are walking along a road 
with your eyes open the various objects within the 

range of your vision will produce in you sensa- 

8 



106 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

tions of sight. Will you see them ? I think it is 
now clear to you that that depends on whether 
these objects suggest the recollection of past sen- 
sations. But we saw in the lessons on attention 
that what we recollect or remember depends on 
what we attend to. When, therefore, you are 
busily thinking about some problem in arithmetic 
the chances are that you will see very few of the 
objects that give you sensations of sight. 

You remember perhaps that I told you in the 
same lesson that the sensations of which we are 
conscious depend to some extent on attention. In 
order to be conscious of a sensation we must know 
it as a sensation of taste, or smell, or touch and so 
on. But before we can classify a sensation, before 
we can say this is a sensation of smell, it must 
suggest to the mind similar sensations, and as 
what we remember depends upon attention, the 
sensations to which we do not attend may not 
suggest similar sensations and so may not be 
known. 

Perception is that act of the mind which we 
describe as gaining knowledge through the senses. 
When we see, hear, smell or taste objects we are 
said to perceive them. 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 107 

But what do we do when we perceive ? In 
other words, what takes place in the mind when 
we perceive ? That is a difficult question which I 
will try to answer in the next lesson. 

LIST OF QUESTIONS. 

1. Why is sensation the subject of the lesson ? 

2. What is a physical fact? 

3. Give examples of the series of physical 
facts that procede sensation. 

4. Illustrate at length what you mean when 
you say you see an object. 

5. What would a man know of an apple who 
saw it for the first time. 

6. Define sensation. 

7. Why do I say " directly follows ? " 

8. Why do I say it is a simple mental fact? 




108 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

LESSON XII. 

SENSATION AND PERCEPTION. 

N the last lesson we saw that a sensation is 
that simple mental state which directly fol- 
lows the last change in the brain which results 
from the stimulation of an incarrying nerve. Per- 
ception I defined provisionally, as gaining knowl- 
edge through the senses. But what do the senses 
tell us of objects? To answer that question is to 
go a long way toward answering the question which 
I raised at the close of the last lesson — what takes 
place in the mind when we perceive ? 

Put an apple on your table, and sit far enough 
away from it to prevent it from affecting any sense 
but the sense of sight. What do you learn about 
it through the sense of sight? Merely its color. 
But what is color? A quality of objects, you will 
say, in this case of the apple. But is not this 
quality of objects, this color of the apple, simply a 
sensation, a state of your mind ? However strange 
it may seem to think so, you will see that you must 
admit it, if you bear in mind what a sensation is. 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 109 

A sensation, we have seen, is that simple mental 
state which directly follows the last change in the 
brain which results from the stimulation of an in- 
carrying nerve. Is any nerve stimulated in this 
case ? Yes, the optic nerve. The waves of light 
strike the retina of the eye and cause a change in 
it, and this in the adjacent particles of the optic 
nerve, and these in the particles next to them, and 
so until the brain is reached, and then — what hap- 
pens then? Why, according to our definition, the 
simple mental state that directly follows is a sen- 
sation — in this case a sensation of color. 

Close your eyes now and request a friend to 
bring the apple near enough to you to enable you 
to smell it. What does the sense of smell tell you 
about it ? Simply its odor. But what is odor ? A 
quality of objects, you will say, in this case, of the 
apple. But again I ask, is not this quality simply 
a sensation, a state of your mind ? If you followed 
the reasoning of the last paragraph, it will be un- 
necessary to repeat it here. You will see that there 
is in this case, also, a stimulation of an incarrying 
nerve — the olfactory nerve — causing a change in 
the brain and followed by a sensation of smell. 

If you will stop up your nose as well as close 



IIO LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

your eyes and put your hand upon the apple, you 
can see what the sense of touch will tell you about 
it ; it will tell you how it feels, its smoothness or 
roughness ; but I think you see that this smooth- 
ness or roughness is only a name which you have 
given to your sensation. 

If this reasoning is correct, it is evident that 
all that the senses tell us of objects is the sensations 
they produce in our minds. If, then, perceiving is 
gaining a knowledge of objects through the senses, 
inasmuch as all that the senses tell us of objects 
is the sensations they produce in us, all that we 
know of objects when we perceive them is these 
sensations. 

I am quite certain that you will feel very 
much opposed to accepting this conclusion. All 
your life you have been accustomed to think of 
your senses as telling you about objects, and you 
can not easily bring yourself to believe that they 
tell you nothing at all of objects, but only how 
objects affect you. But what is science but a cor- 
rection of our ordinary opinions ? Chemistry tells 
you that the drop of dew which glistens on a blade 
of grass contains millions of particles of water; 
astronomy, that the sun does not really rise and 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY III 

set at all, but that it seems to do so, because the 
earth is revolving on its axis with almost incon- 
ceivable rapidity. Will you refuse to believe these 
things because they contradict our ordinary no- 
tions? No, you will say; if the reasoning that 
leads to such conclusions is sound, I will assent to 
them, however hard it may be to do so. 

That is precisely what I ask you to do in the 
case we are discussing. Can the sense of sight 
tell us anything about objects but their color; the 
sense of taste, anything but their taste ; the sense 
of smell, anything but their odor; the sense of 
hearing, anything but their sound ; the sense of 
touch, anything but their feeling? The more 
carefully you think about it, the more clearly you 
will see that they can not. Are the color, taste, 
smell, and odor of objects anything but sensa- 
tions? If there is no flaw in the reasoning, I think 
we must say that they are not. 

When we perceive, then, we simply know the 
sensations which objects excite in our minds. 
But, after all, is that a description of what takes 
place in the mind when we perceive ? 

We saw in the last lesson that to have a sen- 
sation of sound is one thing, to hear an object an- 



112 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

other; that to have a sensation of sight is one 
thing, to see an object another — and soon. What 
does the mind do to its sensations of color and 
smell and taste in order to perceive colors, odors 
and tastes as qualities of objects? One thing it 
does is to group them together — does it not? 
When you look at an apple, you group its color, 
taste and smell together as qualities of one object. 
Sully puts it as follows: "Sense-impressions" — he 
means sensations — u are the alphabet by which we 
spell out the objects presented to us. In order to 
grasp or apprehend these objects, these letters 
must be put together after the manner of words. 
Thus, the apprehension of an apple by the eye in- 
volves the putting together of various sensations 
of sight, touch and taste. This is the mind's own 
work and is known as perception. " He compares 
sensation to the letters of the alphabet, and pre- 
cisely as in reading we put the letters b, r, i, c, k, 
together and read "brick" so in perceiving we put 
together certain sensations and so gain a knowl- 
edge of objects. 

But this grouping of sensations together is 
not all you do when you perceive. As long as 
your sensations seem to be sensations, you do not 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 113 

perceive. You perceive only when they seem to 
yon to be what we have seen they are not — quali- 
ties actually forming a part of the objects in the 
world about us. 

To perceive, then, is to group sensations to- 
gether, and to regard them as qualities of the ex- 
ternal world. 

And now I think you can see why it seemed 
so hard for you to realize that you are not con- 
scious of the objects about you. The colors, and 
odors, and tastes of objects which you find it so 
hard to believe you are not conscious of, you are 
conscious of. But they are not parts of objects at 
all; they are mental facts — states of your own 
mind. I have repeatedly called your attention to 
the broad difference between mental facts such as 
sensations — which are known directly only to the 
person experiencing them — and physical facts 
which are open to the observation of all men. The 
very color of the apple which you see, you think 
your neighbor sees also ; but you are mistaken, the 
color of the apple to you is one sensation, and to 
him another. They may be the same in the sense 
of being exactly like each other — though that 
will be the case only when your eyes are exactly 



114 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

similar and when you see them from the same 
point of view — in no other. 

I said that when we perceive an object we 
group sensations together. To be entirely accurate, 
that needs a little modification. I tried to show 
you in the last lesson that when you are looking at 
an apple your experience of color is a sensation, 
while the thoughts of odor and taste which it sug- 
gests are ideas of sensations experienced in the 
past. Strictly speaking, then, what we do when 
we perceive is to make a group consisting of one 
or more sensations, and ideas of sensations, all of 
which we regard as qualities of an external object. 

The state of mind that results from the act of 
perception is a percept. Be careful not to confuse 
this with image. While you are looking at an 
apple, your state of mind is a percept. If you 
turn your head and think about it, that picture 
which you form of it is an image. 

In order to reach a percept the mind must take 
three steps: (i), It must be conscious of a sensa- 
tion ; (2), it must group this sensation with images 
of sensations already experienced ; and (3), it must 
think of these sensations as qualities of objects. 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 115 

LIST OF QUESTIONS. 

i. Give examples of sensation. 

2. Give a provisional definition of perception. 

3. Show by examples of your own what the 
senses tell you of objects. 

4. Show that the qualities of objects are sen- 
sations. 

5. What we do when we perceive? 

6. State and explain Sully's comparison. 

7. Explain why you have found it so hard to 
believe that you are not conscious of objects. 

8. Give an entirely accurate definition of per- 
ception. 

9. What is a percept ? 

10. What are the elements of a percept? 



Il6 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 



LESSON XIII. 

SENSATION AND PERCEPTION — THE CULTIVATION 
OF THE OBSERVING POWERS. 




.N the eleventh lesson, I said that all know- 
ledge takes its rise in sensation. The men- 
tal history of every human being begins with 
its first sensation. Before the first sensation, the only 
difference between a hnman being and any other 
growing thing — for instance, a tree — so far as mind 
is concerned — consists simply in the fact that the 
former possesses the potentiality of mind. And 
this potentiality first begins to become actuality 
when the human being begins to experience sen- 
sations. Be careful to note that although I have 
said that knowledge takes its rise in sensation, I 
have not said that the first experience of sensa- 
tions constitutes the beginning of knowledge. Far 
from it. If you will consider what knowledge is, 
you will see that in the very nature of the case 
the mind must have sensations before it knows it 
has them. I do not mean what one would mean 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 117 

if he said that a man must have money before he 
can know that he has it. That is only arother 
way of saying that in order that a fact may be 
known, it must exist. That of course is true of 
sensations, but more than that is true. Sensations 
not only must exist in order to be known, but they 
may exist, and often do for a considerable period 
of time before they are known, and I said that if 
we realize what knowledge is we shall see that in 
the very nature of the case this is so. For what is 
it to know a thing? It is to put it into a class, is it 
not ? A child sees a menagerie, and fixes his eyes 
on an animal unknown to him. Why does he not 
know it, or rather, in what does his ignorance of it 
consist? In his inability to class it. He looks at 
it steadily and suddenly shouts " O it is an ele- 
phant!" What has happened? How is it that 
ignorance has given place to knowledge ? He has 
suddenly noticed the resemblance'between this un- 
known object and certain pictures he has seen in 
his reading book, he has put it into a class, and 
when he has classed it, he knows it. 

This putting things into classes constitutes the 
essence of all knowing. Some kinds of knowledge 
we call science- — orderly, systematic knowledge — 



Il8 LESSONS- IN PSYCHOLOGY 

knowledge of laws and causes and principles ; 
other kinds we call unscientific, because in these 
cases our knowledge is unsystematic and discon- 
nected. But whether we know scientifically or 
unscientifically, in order to know a thing we must 
classify it, and in the act of classification consists 
our knowledge of it. Before Newton, no one un- 
derstood the motions of the moon. He helped us 
to understand them — explained them, as we say — 
by helping us to classify them. But in what does 
our understanding of them consist? Merely in 
that we have put them into a class along with 
many familiar facts. As the child felt that he 
knew the animal in the menagerie when he no- 
ticed its resemblance to the pictures he had seen 
in his reading book, so we feel that we understand 
the motions of the heavenly bodies when we have 
put them into the same class with familiar facts, 
such as the falling of a leaf, or the dropping of a 
stone when it ceases to be supported. As to the 
cause of these motions — as to the nature of the 
force upon which they depend — we are as ignor- 
ant to-day as were those old Chaldeans who used 
to stand on the plains of Chaldea, gazing up into 
the sky with that wondering curiosity which has 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 1 19 

been so well called the mother of knowledge. We 
call it gravity, and think we know all abont it, 
simply because when the mind sees the resem- 
blance between a strange fact and familiar facts 
the sense of mystery is gone. What is the cause 
of death ? Would you think it a sufficient answer 
to say that all things die? And yet that is a pre- 
cise illustration of our explanation of the motions 
of the heavenly bodies. What make the heavenly 
bodies move ? The law of gravitation, or the force 
of gravity, says one ; but that is only another way 
of saying that all bodies move. 

If, then, all knowing is merely classifying, if 
a thing unknown is merely a thing unclassified, I 
think you can see that the first sensation mitst be 
unknown. If to know a thing is to classify it, the 
first sensation cannot be known, because it cannot 
be classified. When a boy comes into possession 
of his first piece of money, he cannot put it into a 
purse along with the rest of his money because he 
has no other money. In like manner, the first sen- 
sation cannot be classed with preceding sensations, 
because, since it is the first, it has no predecessors. 

When, therefore, I say that knowledge takes 
its rise in sensations, I do not mean that the first 



120 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

experience of sensations constitutes the beginning 
of knowledge, but that sensations constitute the first 
material upon which the mind^s powers of knowing 
are exerted, I think the last lesson has made it 
clear that before objects can be perceived there 
must be a knowledge of sensations. If perception 
consists in grouping our sensations together and 
regarding them as qualities of external objects 
plainly in order to perceive them, there must be a 
knowledge of the sensations which are grouped to- 
gether. The grouping by the mind of unconscious 
sensations would be an impossibility. 

I want to make this entirely clear, because I 
want you to see how important it is for you to cul- 
tivate the senses of your pupils. I told you some 
time ago, you will remember, that the facts of 
which we are conscious and intuitions constitute 
the foundation of everything we believe. I urged 
you to get as clear an idea as possible of what con- 
sciousness is, and of the facts of which we are con- 
scious, in order that you might avoid building your 
temple of knowledge upon a rotten foundation. 
But a good building requires not only a good foun- 
dation but good materials. Be your foundation 
ever so poor, unless your materials are good, your 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 121 

building will be worthless. Now, the knowledge 
gained through the senses is the material, for the 
most part, out of which the edifice of knowledge 
is constructed. If it is vague and indefinite, the 
knowledge based upon it will be vague and indefi- 
nite, too : if it is inaccurate or false, so will the 
knowledge be which depends upon it. 

But the knowledge gained through the senses 
may be accurate as far as it goes and yet be very 
imperfect, because of its incompleteness. You 
know that a blind man is shut out from a whole 
world that is open to you. But he whose sense of 
sight is highly cultivated just as certainly has daily 
access to a world into which the ordinary man can- 
not enter. He sees a thousand delicate colors, a 
thousand pleasing gradations of light and shade 
that are as entirely beyond the range of the ordi- 
nary man's vision as though they came through a 
sense of which the latter was deprived. Read 
Ruskin's essay on the sky and then tell me if the 
sky he saw and the sky which you and I see are 
the same ? Clear or cloudy is the ordinary descrip- 
' tion of the sky. That would be as inadequate a 
description of Ruskin's sky, as it would be of 
Americans to say that they are divided into two 

9 



122 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

classes — men and women ! To Ruskin, the sky 
is one of the many beautiful things in whose beau- 
ty his trained eye enables him to revel — a beauty 
as changing and as various as the face of the sea, 
and as charming as the beauty of those we love. 

And this brings us to another reason for culti- 
vating the senses of our pupils. I told you in the 
first lesson that one of the ways in which the study 
of Psychology would help you is that it would help 
you to see at what you ought to aim. Possibly 
you do not yet see that the development of the 
aesthetic powers of your pupils, of their power to 
perceive and appreciate beauty, is an important 
part of their education. If you do not, all I can 
do is to bid you think and think until you see that 
a mind without the power to perceive and enjoy 
the beauty of the world is as truly abnormal and 
one-sided as a human body would be without arms. 
If you should go to the famous gallery in Dresden, 
you might look at Raphael's immortal painting 
and see nothing to admire. But if you did not, 
the fault would not lie in the picture. The beauty 
is there, and if a first study of it does not reveal 
it ; you should go and go again — make it your 
companion, as it were, and compel it to reveal to 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 1 23 

you the beauty that has so enraptured all the lov- 
ers of beautiful paintings since Raphael's time. 

In like manner, if you do not see that the 
power to appreciate the beautiful is as truly to 
be desired as a good memory or excellent reason- 
ing powers, I can not show it to you, nor can 
any one. But if you will make it a subject of 
careful study, you will come to see it as clearly 
as you do the axioms of geometry. 

There are, then, three reasons why we should 
do what we can in the way of training the senses 
of our pupils : ( 1 ), it makes their knowledge more 
accurate; (2), it makes it more complete; and 
(3), it tends to develop their power to see and 
appreciate the beauty of nature. 

LIST OF QUESTIONS. 

i. What do we do when we know? 

2. Illustrate. 

3. What is the difference between scientific 
and unscientific knowledge ? 

4. Illustrate. 

5. Show that the first sensation is neces- 
sarily unknown. 



124 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

6. What is meant when it is said that all 
knowledge takes its rise in sensation ? 

7. State the three reasons why it is im- 
portant for us to train the senses of our pupils? 

8. Give illustrations. 

9. What is meant by aesthetic faculty? 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 125 

LESSON XIV. 

THE CULTIVATION OF THE OBSERVING POWERS. 




N the last lesson, I endeavored to show the 

[^ reasons for the cultivation of the observing 

powers. The question I wish to try to 

answer to-day is, What can the teacher do in the 

way of cultivating the observing powers of his 

pupils ? 

Of course all you can do is to put them in such 
positions, to surround them with such influences, 
as will induce them to observe more closely, care- 
fully, and methodically than they otherwise would 
have done. It is, perhaps, worth while to call at- 
tention here to a fact which people often lose sight 
of — the fact that a comparatively small part of any 
one's education is acquired at school. There is a 
great difference between a child at birth and the 
same child at the age of six, and that difference is 
the result of the unfolding, of the education of his 
powers. Partly through the spontaneous prompt- 
ings of instinct, partly through the influences by 



ia6 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

which he is surrounded, he has exercised his vari- 
ous powers of mind and body so that the helpless 
babe has been transformed into the child of six. 
Sometimes the interest in natural objects is so 
great that without any stimulus from parent or 
teacher the child naturally, as we say, observes 
closely and carefully and so becomes a trained ob- 
server. And sometimes the disinclination to ob- 
servation is so strong, or, in other words, the im- 
pulse to that kind of activity is so feeble, that the 
utmost skill of the teacher is of little avail. You 
will remember that in the lessons on attention, I 
said that voluntary attention is of little value un- 
less it paves the way for involuntary attention. If 
you will think about that carefully, it will enable 
you to see what you can do, and what you cannot 
do, in the way of cultivating the observing powers 
of your pupils. For the cultivation of the observ- 
ing powers really consists in the formation of 
habits of close and careful attention to objects per- 
ceived. All you can do to help your pupils to 
form such habits, is to give them motives for at- 
tending, but if they only attend under the pressure 
of your motives, if the objects attended to open 
up no interesting phases, if, in a word, voluntary 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 1 27 

attention does not pass into involuntary attention, 
all the teaching in the world will not make them 
good observers. In the great majority of cases, 
however, there is enough of capacity for interest 
in natural objects to make that interest an effec- 
tive motive in forming habits of careful observa- 
tion, if the right means are employed to develop it. 
Of those means, perhaps the best the school 
authorities as a rule will not permit you to employ. 
If you should propose to close your school the 
middle of Friday afternoon, to take a walk with 
your pupils through the woods and across the 
fields for the purpose of calling their attention to 
the flowers and trees and leaves and birds, they 
would say that it would be a waste of time. They 
think it altogether preferable for you to employ 
your pupils in memorizing the names of the capi- 
tals of the various countries ot the w r orld, the 
length of the rivers, the heights of the mountains 
and so on. But if you cannot go with them you 
can induce them to go and ask them to tell you 
what they saw. The knowledge that they will 
have to give an account of what they have seen 
will be a motive for observing more carefully than 
they otherwise would have done. And indeed 



128 WESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

unless you are yourself a loving observer of nature, 
your company would be of little service to them. 
In the School of the Far-off Future, when men will 
universally realize the importance of the proper 
development of the various faculties of the mind 
as keenly as trained physiologists to-day realize 
the importance of the health of the various organs 
of the body, in that School, I believe no teacher 
will be allowed to enter — at least in the primary 
grades — until he has stood certain tests that 
would seem very curious to us. Is the face of na- 
ture indifferent to him ? Are her smiles in sum- 
mer and her frowns in winter alike lost on him ? 
Can he look upon the brooks that "fret" along 
their channels and the sheep and the cows grazing 
in the meadows and the wild flowers growing 
along the hedgerows and hear the songs of birds 
with no feelings of gladness ? If so, I believe he 
will be regarded as lacking an essential element 
of a teacher of boys and girls. The ideal teacher 
of the ideal school will look on the face of nature 
with something of the same fondness that the 
mother looks on the face of her child. As every 
act of her child is an object of interest to the 
mother so every detail of nature will be of interest 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 129 

to this teacher, and he will watch the changes that 
pass over the face of nature as winter gives way 
to spring, and spring to summer, and summer 
gradually dies away into autumn, with something 
of the same sad and yet fond interest that the 
mother watches her child as she travels on the 
road to womanhood. 

But we are not living in the future, and we 
have to take ourselves as we do our pupils — as 
we are, and make the best of ns. And it seems to 
me that if we do not care for nature we may 
realize the importance of helping our pupils to 
care for it, and to do this, as I have said, the only 
thing we can do is to give them motives for attend- 
ing to it more closely than they otherwise would 
have done. You might have them make lists of 
the various trees and flowers and plants and birds 
of the neighborhood, and note the dates when the 
trees begin to put forth their leaves and the flowers 
to bloom and the birds to build their nests. If 
the birds are of a migratory sort, you should have 
them observe when they come and when they go 
and, in any case, what they feed on, and how they 
build their nests. You should have a school muse- 
um composed entirely of interesting objects which 



130 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

they have collected. In such ways, you may in- 
duce them to become familiar with every bird and 
tree and flower and plant in the neighborhood, 
and during the process three-fourths of them will 
have acquired such an interest in nature as will 
make them good observers for life. 

You can turn their fondness for drawing into 
account in the same direction. Have them draw 
not pictures but real objects from memory, and 
the result will be that the next time the object is 
seen it will be observed much more closely and 
the image of it will be fixed in the mind much 
more definitely. 

You should give object lessons. But if these 
lessons are to have any value they must be care- 
fully prepared and carefully given. Some teachers 
seem to imagine that there is a virtue in an object 
lesson as such, but in the nature of the case this 
is not so. If an object lesson is of any use in 
cultivating the observing powers of your pupils 
it is because it induces them to observe more 
closely than they otherwise would have done ; if 
it does not do that it will leave their observing 
powers just where it found them. 

An object lesson may be made to serve two 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 131 

important purposes besides furnishing motives to 
your pupils to observe : You may make it a means 
of imparting knowledge, and of enlarging the 
range of their vocabulary. 

When you are preparing an object lesson you 
should make up your mind in precisely what ways 
you will reach these various ends. You will of 
course conduct it for the most part by asking ques- 
tions. If you are dealing with little children, you 
will begin by asking them questions which they 
can answer with ease, for the sake of interesting 
them in the lesson. Children like to display their 
powers, and they like lessons which give them op- 
portunities to do that. But you will be careful to 
note that to interest them in the lesson is by no 
means the same thing as interesting them in the 
object. You interest them in the object when you 
ask them questions about it which they can not 
answer, but which they can find the answer to by 
more careful observation. Accordingly, a part of 
your preparation of an object lesson should con- 
sist of such a careful study of the object as will 
enable you to observe certain qualities which you 
think have escaped their attention, in order that 
you may be able to induce them to study it more 



132 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

carefully than they have ever done before, and 
give them the pleasure of finding out something 
for themselves. 

You should carefully decide also precisely to 
what extent you wish to enlarge their vocabulary. 
If, for instance, you are giving a lesson on glass, 
you can arrange your questions so as to get them 
to tell you that they can see through it. Then 
you can tell them that things which can be seen 
through are transparent, and ask them to tell you 
as many transparent things as they can think of. 

I will close this lesson by quoting a very sensible 
paragraph from M. Buisson on this subject: "It 
is not desirable to have the object lesson begin and 
end at a fixed hour. Let it be given on the occa- 
sion of a reading or writing lesson, or in connection 
with the dictation exercise with the lesson in his- 
tory, geography, or grammar. If it occupies two 
minutes instead of twenty it will be only the better 
for that. Often it will consist, not in a series of 
consecutive questions, but in one spirited, precise, 
and pointed question, which will provoke a reply 
of the same sort." 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 133 

LIST OF QUESTIONS. 

i. What must you do to cultivate the observ- 
ing powers of your pupils? 

2. Is all the education we receive acquired at 
school ? 

3. Explain your answer. 

4. What is the most important means of cul- 
tivating the observing powers of your pupils ? 

5. Why is it important for a teacher to be a 
lover of nature ? 

6. What are the uses of a school museum ? 

7. What three purposes should an object les- 
son serve ? 

8. How do you think an object lesson should 
be prepared ? 

9. Have you ever given object lessons, and if 
so, on what subjects? 




134 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

LESSON XV. 

MEMORY AND THE LAWS OF ASSOCIATION. 

defined perception, you will remember, as 
that act of the mind in which we group 
together sensations and ideas of sensations 
and regard them as qualities of an external object. 
How is it possible for us to group ideas of past 
sensations with present sensations ? Because we 
remember the past sensations. How do we come 
to recall those past sensations in connection with 
present sensations ? Because of the laws of asso- 
ciation of ideas. 

If you think about anything, no matter what, 
you are sure to find yourself thinking the moment 
after of something connected with it. Think 
about last summer's institute and you will think 
of some of the friends you met there, of some of 
the people you visited, or some of the books you 
read. Think about Christmas and you may think 
of hunting, or of the party you attended, or of the 
turkey you had for dinner, and so on. There is 
nothing which you can think about that has no 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 135 

connection with anything else in your experience, 
and when you think of anything you are sure to 
think of some of the things which have been or 
are connected with it. This fact, that thinking of 
anything tends to make us think of something 
else connected with it, is called the association 
of ideas. 

If you watch the course of your thoughts for 
an hour, you will find that while the very great 
majority, if not all of them, occur to you through 
the association of ideas, there are very different 
kinds of connection between the ideas recalled 
and the experiences which recall them. Thus, if 
you think of a hill, it may make you think of a 
walk you took there last night, or it may make 
you think of one like it near your own home, or 
it may make you think of the tremendous forces 
that raised it above the surrounding country. 
In the first case, the thought of the hill makes 
you think of the walk you took there, because 
when you were taking the walk you thought of 
the hill. In other words, the thought of the hill 
and the thought of the walk were in your mind 
at the same time. In the second case, the thought 
of the hill makes you think of one like it near 



136 LESSONS 'IN PSYCHOLOGY 

your home, not because you have ever seen them 
both at the same time, or because you have ever 
thought of them both at the same time before, but 
because they are like each other. In the third case 
also, the thought of the hill does not make you 
think of its cause because you have thought of 
them before, but because they sustain to each other 
the relation of cause and effect. 

Most Psychologists call association of the first 
kind, association by contiguity. Others, Fitch, for 
example, call it mechanical association, and it 
seems to me it will be useful for you to remember 
both names and the reasons for them. The reason 
for the first~name, association by contiguity, is self- 
evident. Contiguity means nearness, and this kind 
of association is called association by contiguity, 
because the things associated were thought of at 
or about the same time. The reason for the other 
name, mechanical association, will be clear when 
you understand that it is used to contrast this kind 
of association with another called rational or logi- 
cal. For instance, when the thought of the hill 
makes you think of one like it near your own 
home, there is an inherent, rational connection — 
similarity — and not a mere external or mechani- 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 137 

cal connection between them. If the first time a 
child sees a Chinaman and a steam-engine, he sees 
them both together, the next time he sees one of 
them, he will be likely to think of the other, not 
because they have any inner connection but be- 
cause they were seen at the same time. This kind 
of association is called association by contiguity 
because the things associated were thought of at 
or about the same time. It is called mechanical 
association because the things associated have 
only a mechanical connection with each other. It 
is this kind of association which enables you to 
recall the names of the people you know when 
you see them. The looks of the person, and his 
name has been in your mind at the same time and 
hence one of them tends to recall the other. It is 
the same kind of association which makes the 
odor of a rose recall its looks. The whole process 
of learning a language whether your own or some 
other, is based on this kind of association. Learn- 
ing a melody, or committing a declamation are ex- 
amples of the same kind of association. 

I would like to have you note that things as 
unrelated as it is possible for things to be in this 
world, may be brought side by side in space, and, 

10 



138 . LKSSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

if so, we may see them at the same time ; and 
then, according to the law of mechanical associa- 
tion, the thought of one will tend to recall the 
thought of the other. Also, events totally discon- 
nected may happen at the same time, and be 
known by us as occurring at the same time ; and, 
if so, the thought of one will afterwards tend to 
make us think of the other according to the law of 
mechanical association. 

I call your attention to this because I wish to 
make it entirely clear that the connecting link in 
the case of things mechanically associated is time, 
and that this kind of association is called mechani- 
cal for this very reason. But bear in mind that 
the time which forms this connecting link is not 
the time in which events happen, but the time in 
which we think of them. The Declaration of Inde- 
pendence makes you think of the Fourth of July, 
not because it was made on that day, but because 
the thought of the two have been in your mind at 
the sa?ne time. 

Contrast, now, this kind of association with that 
which exists between two similar objects where 
the thought of one tends to recall the thought of 
the other, and you will see that the relation be- 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 139 

tween them is 110 longer external or mechanical, 
but inner. It is the qualities of things themselves 
which makes them like each other. One peach is 
like another peach because of the qualities which 
make them peaches; and like things are asso- 
ciated, not merely because they are alike, but be- 
cause the mind perceives their likeness. Hence 
we call this kind of association logical or rational. 

The essence of logical or rational association, 
you will note, consists in the fact that the bond 
which connects things logically or rationally is 
some inner relation perceived by the mind itself. 
The inner relations which I have used thus far for 
purpose of illustration, are those of likeness and 
cause and effect. There are many others. There 
is the relation of an instrument and its uses, and a 
principle and its consequences. Thus, the thought 
of a gun will make you think of shooting, and the 
thought of a theorem in geometry will make you 
think of examples of it. 

I hope you will see to it that you understand 
the difference between the logical and rational 
memory perfectly. There are many tests of good 
teaching, but few which go more nearly to the root 
of the matter than the use which the teacher makes 



140 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

of the memory, or rather the kind of memory 
which his teaching tends to cultivate. If a teacher 
relies on the mechanical memory mainly, if he 
does, not encourage and help his pupils to associate 
what they have learned mechanically in a logical 
or rational way, he is pretty near a failure. 

LIST OF QUESTIONS. 

1. Define perception. 

2. What is meant by the association of ideas ? 

3. State and illustrate the two kinds of asso- 
ciation. 

4. State and illustrate the connecting link in 
the case of mechanical association. 

5. State and explain the connecting link in 
the case of rational association. 

6. Mention as many relations as you can think 
of which form connecting links in the case of ra- 
tional association. 

7. Why is it important for you to distinguish 
between the two ? 




LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 141 

LESSON XVI. 

MEMORY AND THE LAWS OF ASSOCIATION. 



N tlie last lesson, I endeavored to explain 
what is meant by association of ideas and to 
define and illustrate the two kinds of asso- 
ciation. I said that mechanical association is that 
kind of association in consequence of which any- 
thing we are thinking about tends to make us 
think of something else we thought of at or about 
the same time ; logical or rational association I ex- 
plained as the kind of association in consequence 
of which anything we are thinking about tends to 
make us think of something else between which 
and the thing we are thinking about, the mind has 
perceived relations. I said also that it was of great 
importance for the teacher to distinguish between 
these two kinds of association in order that he 
may know what kind of memory to cultivate. 
For the teaching which cultivates the rational 
memory, the memory which depends on rational 
association, is good teaching, while the teaching 



142 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

which cultivates the mechanical memory, the 
memory which depends on mechanical association, 
is, with the exception of certain cases which I 
shall mention later, bad. 

The reasons why it is important for us to help 
our pupils cultivate their rational memory are 
manifest. In the first place, when they associate 
things logically, they are exercising, and therefore 
cultivating, the higher powers of their minds. 
Logical or rational association we have seen, is as- 
sociation according to some inner relation. But, 
of course before this relation can form the basis of 
an association it must be apprehended, and this act 
of apprehensiou is an exercise of the higher pow- 
ers of the mind. Fitch says that the difference 
between a wise man and one who is not wise con- 
sists less in the things he knows than in the way 
in which he knows them. The wise man knows 
things in their relations, I think he would say, has 
his knowledge classified, in one word, has associ- 
ated what he knows rationally. In the same para- 
graph, Fitch observes that an historical fact is 
learned to little purpose unless it is seen in its 
bearing on some political, economical or moral 
law. I am sure you agree with him there. I am 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 143 

sure you understand that a teacher may know 
facts enough about history to pass an ordinary 
examination very creditably and yet know them to 
very little purpose simply because he knows them 
in a purely mechanical way, simply because he has 
associated them mechanically. 

Another reason for helping our pupils culti- 
vate their logical memory is that they are more in- 
terested in what they have associated logically. To 
learn facts by means of the mechanical memory is 
an irksome task ; to apprehend the relations be- 
tween those facts, to associate them logically, in 
other words, is a delightful labor, especially if the 
pupil has been led to discern for himself the rela- 
tions which form the basis of the association. Fur- 
ther on, I wish to call your attention particularly 
to the fact that interest is a great help to the mem- 
ory. Here, I will only remind you that it is quite 
as important for you to interest your pupils for 
other reasons. If we interest our pupils we do 
what we can to make them students for life, and 
that is a much more important matter than having 
them learn well any particular subject. Indeed, I 
think you will admit that if we had to choose be- 
tween having our pupils careless and indifferent to 



144 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

study at school, and having them studious through 
life, it would be entirely wise for us to choose the 
latter. I do not mean, of course, that such a 
choice is possible. On the contrary, as I am trying 
to show in this very paragraph, the best way to 
make him a student for life, is to make him an in- 
terested student at school. 

Another reason for cultivating the logical 
memory is that any one with that kind of memory 
can use what he knows. Some one has said that 
a man could not stand under a tree with Edmund 
Burke during a shower of rain without perceiving 
that he was in the company of a very remarkable 
man. The reason doubtless was, not that Burke 
was continually saying brilliant or witty things, 
but that he said nothing that was not to the point. 
A man may know a great deal mechanically, and 
yet be unable to use his knowledge, because he 
cannot think of it when he w r ants it, and cannot 
see how he can use it when he does think of it. 
Such a person's mind is like a well-filled scrap bag ; 
there is a good deal in it, but everything is in such 
disorder that you have to turn it upside down, as 
it were, before you can get any particular thing 
you want out of it. 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 145 

You have doubtless heard the saying, " Great 
memory, little wit." I think we can now see 
what truth there is in it. It is altogether possible 
for a person to have a great mechanical memory 
and have very little mind besides. Indeed, there 
are plenty of cases on record in which idiots have 
shown remarkable power of remembering facts 
mechanically. But to have a fine logical memory 
and a poor mind is an impossibility. 

Educated persons often complain that their 
memory is not so good as it was in their youth. 
What they mean is that their mechanical memory 
is not so good. They have acquired the very 
excellent habit of fixing their attention on im- 
portant matters and neglecting the trivial events 
that are not worth remembering, and because they 
forget them, while their uneducated friends re- 
member them, they imagine that their memory 
suffers by comparison. But it is not so. The 
educated man cultivates his logical memory, and 
neglects for the most part, his mechanical memory, 
w T hile the uneducated man does the exact oppo- 
site. It is natural therefore for the uneducated to 
have better mechanical memories than the edu- 
cated. As Dr. Harris observes, if we want the 



146 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

child's memory we can have it. We can force 
ourselves to ignore the difference between the im- 
portant and the unimportant and attend impar- 
tially to everything that comes before us. So far 
as we succeed in doing this, we shall remember 
important and unimportant matters with equal 
accuracy. But is such a memory desirable ? No, 
because in that case we shall remember important 
matters less accurately than we should have done 
otherwise. 

But I do not mean to convey the impression 
that everything can be learned by means of the 
logical memory. Logical association consists in 
connecting facts together by means of some inner 
relation. But before we can see the relations be- 
tween facts, we must know the facts themselves. 

For this reason, there is a place for the me- 
chanical memory in education. But here you 
should note that there are as many different mem- 
ories, so to speak, as there are kinds of facts to be 
remembered. There is a memory of colors, a 
memory of dates, a memory of rocks, and so on. 
You know very well that some of your pupils have 
an excellent memory for geography, others for 
grammar, others for history, and so on. 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 147 

Now, since memory is not one faculty, but 
many, it follows that there is no such thing as a 
universal cultivation of the memory. If you find 
your memory weak in any particular direction, 
what you ought to do is to practice it on the kind 
of things you find most difficultly in remembering. 
Dr. Harris gives an interesting and instructive ac- 
count of his own efforts in cultivating his mechan- 
ical memory. When he was about eighteen, he 
tells us, he had great difficulty in remembering 
dates. He cultivated his memory for dates in the 
following manner: The first day, he learned the 
dates of accession of three or four English kings ; 
the next day, he learned two or three more, and 
reviewed those he learned the preceding day ; the 
next day, again reviewing from the beginning, he 
added two or three more to the list, and so on, 
until he had thoroughly learned the entire list. 
After two or three months, he found he had for- 
gotten some of them, so he learned them again, 
and after two or three years he repeated the opera- 
tion. By such training, he tells us, his memory 
for dates was so improved that he has never since 
had any trouble in remembering such dates as he 



148 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

cared to remember. He cultivated his memory for 
names in the same way. 

LIST OF QUESTIONS. 

i. Explain and illustrate the two kinds of as- 
sociation. 

2. Show that in cultivating the logical mem- 
ory of your pupils you are cultivating the higher 
powers of their minds. 

3. What does Fitch say is the difference be- 
tween a wise man and one who is not wise ? 

4. Show by illustrations that helping your 
pupils to associate facts logically, interests them. 

5. Give another reason for cultivating the 
logical memory. 

6. Explain what is meant by " Great mem- 
ory, little wit." 

7. How many memories has the mind? 

8. What follows from this as to the cultiva- 
tion of the memory? 

9. How did Dr. Harris cultivate his memory 
for dates ? 




LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 149 

LESSON XVII. 

IMAGINATION. 

EFORE taking up the subject of imagina- 
tion, I wish to add a few more words to 
what I was saying at the close of the last 
lesson about the circumstances under which it is 
proper for us to lay stress on the mechanical 
memory. 

All verbal memorizing, of course, is mechani- 
cal memorizing. Those teachers who require, or 
even permit, their pupils to answer questions in 
the words of the book, cultivate the mechanical 
memory at -the expense of the rational. I think 
it would be well for you to make it a rule never 
to allow your pupils to memorize words whenever 
you have any doubt as to the value of it. Fitch 
has stated with great clearness the circumstances 
under which verbal memorizing is valuable. He 
puts it as follows: "When the object is to have 
thoughts, facts, reasonings, reproduced, seek to 
have them reproduced in the pupil's own words. 
Do not set the faculty of mere verbal memory to 



150 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

work. But when the words themselves in which 
a fact is embodied have some special fitness or 
beauty of their own, when they represent some 
scientific datum or central truth, which could not 
otherwise be so well expressed, then see that the 
form as well as the substance of the expression is 
learned by heart." Compayre, commenting on 
this, says that " according to this, it is easy to fix 
the limit which verbal repetition should not pass. 
In grammar, the principal rules ; in arithmetic, 
the definitions ; in geometry, the theorems ; in the 
sciences in general, the formulas ; in history, a few 
summaries ; in geography, the explanation of a 
few technical terms ; in ethics, a few maxims ; 
these are the things which the child ought to 
know word for word, on the condition of course 
that he perfectly understands the meaning of 
what he recites, and that his attention is called 
not less to the thought than to the form of the 
expression." To this I would add that no week 
should be allowed to pass by in which the pupil 
is not encouraged to learn word for word some 
beautiful sentence or paragraph, and thus store 
his mind with beautiful thoughts beautifully ex- 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 151 

pressed, by reflection upon which, he may culti- 
vate his taste for beautiful literature. 

And now I have said substantially what I in- 
tended to say about mechanical and rational as- 
sociation and mechanical and rational memory. 
It has been my aim to make you realize that of 
all tHe subjects within the whole range of Psy- 
choloy there is scarcely one of more practical im- 
portance than this. You are constantly making 
use of the memory of your pupils. How you make 
use of it, is the question the answer to which 
largely determines the quality of your work. And, 
although I have explained as clearly as I can the 
kind of use which I think you ought to make of it, 
I am very much afraid that many of you will be 
considerably embarrassed w 7 hen you undertake to 
put my suggestions into practice. May I tell you 
the reason ? It is simply this : You have difficulty 
in helping your pupils to associate logically or ra- 
tionally the facts of United States History, for ex- 
ample, simply because they are not so associated 
in your own minds. You may understand ever so 
clearly the distinction between mechanical and ra- 
tional association, and appreciate ever so vividly 
the importance of the latter, but you cannot apply 



152 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

that distinction in teaching any subject unless you 
have yourself associated the facts of that subject 
logically or rationally. As long as the addition, 
subtraction, multiplication, and division of whole 
numbers seem to you to be entirely disconnected 
operations, and each of these entirely disconnected 
from the addition, subtraction, multiplication, and 
division of common fractions, and these from the 
same operations in decimal fractions, you cannot 
enable your pupils to associate the facts of arith- 
metic rationally, because they are not so associated 
in your own mind. In like manner, as long as you 
see no connection between the very different kinds 
of people who settled at Plymouth and Jamestown, 
and the differences between the people of Massa- 
chusetts and the people of Virginia at the close of 
the Revolutionary War for instance ; as long as 
you see no connection between these differences 
and their reluctance to unite together in a single 
strong government ; as long as you do not see how 
this reluctance could only be overcome by com- 
promises in the constitution which were in the 
nature of contradictions, which contradictions 
under the influence of slavery led to other contra- 
dictions — each party affirming his own view with 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 153 

passionate intensity — and these to the Civil War — 
until you see these things as clearly as the sun in 
the noon-day heavens, American history is a sealed 
book to you, and it will be a sealed book to your 
pupils so far as help from you is concerned, simply 
because the facts are associated in your own mind 
in a merely mechanical way. In like manner, until 
you realize in detail to what extent the character 
and history and institutions of a people are a mat- 
ter of latitude and longitude and soil and climate ; 
until you see that the explanation of the building 
of a Chicago in fifty years is to be found in the 
facts of physical geography ; until you see that if 
the soil and climate and other physical conditions 
of the North and the South had been reversed the 
parts they played in the Civil War would have 
been reversed — until you see all this and much 
more of a similar character you cannot teach geog- 
raphy properly, because you do not know geogra- 
phy in a rational or logical way. 

In a word, to make a practical use of this dis- 
tinction between logical and mechanical memory 
you must see it, in the first place, and in the sec- 
ond, you must know the subjects you undertake 

11 



154 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

to teach in a logical or rational way, and the latter 
is just as indispensable as the former. 

I pass on now to speak of imagination. 

If you have ever watched the growth of the 
mind of a child, I am sure you have noticed that 
a child has the power to remember objects and 
persons before he has power to think of them 
when they are absent. In other words, a child 
will show in the most unmistakable ways that he 
knows his father or mother or nurse several 
months before he gives any evidence of thinking 
about them when they are absent. This latter 
power of the mind, this power to form ideas of 
things not present to the mind, Psychologists call 
imagination. You will get an accurate idea of 
what it is if you will think of it as the image- 
making faculty, provided you give the right mean- 
ing to "image." In ordinary usage the word is 
limited to the representation of visible things. 
But in psychology we may not only speak of the 
image of a sound, taste, touch, smell, but of the 
image of a hope or a fear or even of a volition. 
As used in psychology the word image is used to 
denote the mental representation of any experience 
whatever, or any combination of experiences. 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 1 55 

If imagination is the faculty of making im- 
ages, it is evident that there are two kinds. For 
when the child cries for his absent mamma, the 
act of imagination evidently consists in holding 
before the mind a copy more or less faithful of the 
mother as seen and known. But the same child, 
when he gets a little older, may make pictures of 
things he has never seen — of things that have 
never come within the range of his experience. 
He may put the head of a dog on the body of a 
horse, and give to the horse the legs of a man, and 
so on. The first kind of imagination is called 
reproductive, since it reproduces past experiences ; 
the second is called constructive, since it takes 
ideas or images furnished by the reproductive 
imagination and combines them into new wholes. 
This brief explanation is enough to make it clear 
that the constructive imagination can not act until 
the reproductive imagination has first supplied the 
materials. As a bricklayer can not lay bricks un- 
less he has bricks, or a shoemaker make shoes 
without leather, so the constructive imagination 
can do nothing unless it is furnished with material 
by the reproductive imagination. 



156 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

LIST OF QUESTIONS. 

i. State and illustrate the circumstances un- 
der which verbal memorizing is valuable. 

2. Is it possible for a teacher to understand 
the difference between mechanical and rational 
memory, and have difficulty in applying it; and, 
if so, why? 

3. Illustrate in the case of history. 

4. Illustrate in the case of geography. 

5. Illustrate in the case of arithmetic. 

6. Illustrate the difference between imagina- 
tion and memory. 

7. Define imagination. 

8. Define image. 

9. State and explain the two kinds of imagin- 
ation. 

10. Show that constructive imagination is de- 
pendent upon reproductive imagination. 




LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 1 57 

LESSON XVIII. 

IMAGINATION. 

\N the last lesson, I defined imagination as 
the image-making power, and I said that 
inasmuch as the mind makes two kind of 
images, images which are copies of past experi- 
ences, and complex images the elements which are 
copies of past experience, but which themselves 
are not copies of past experiences, there are tw T o 
kinds of imagination, reproductive and construc- 
tive. Psychologists call the first kind of imagina- 
tion reproductive, because it reproduces the past 
experience ; they call the second constructive, be- 
cause out of elements furnished by the reproduc- 
tive imagination, it constructs new wholes, wholes 
which are new in the sense of having never before 
been in the consciousness of the individual who 
experiences them. 

Perhaps you have difficulty in distinguishing 
between reproductive imagination and memory. 
You hear a song, and it makes you think of the 
friend whom you heard sing it a few days age ; in 



158 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

other words, an image of your friend arises before 
you, as you listen to the song. This is both an act 
of memory and reproductive imagination, and the 
question is, what is the difference between the two ? 

To begin with, in the early stages of memory, 
it may exist without imagination. I called your 
attention in the last lesson to the fact that a child 
has the power to remember objects and persons 
before he has the power to think of them when 
they are absent. When he sees them, he knows 
that he has seen them before, in other words, he 
remembers having seen them. When they are ab- 
sent, he does not think of them ; in other words, 
he does not form an image of them, simply because 
he has not the power to. 

But when he begins to think about his absent 
mamma, as he will by and by, what then is the 
difference between the two? When he thinks 
about her, does he not remember her, and is not 
his thought of her an image, and so the product 
of the imagination ? Yes, but I think you can see 
the difference between simply thinking of her, or 
rather between simply having the thought or 
image of her in his mind and knowing that image 
as the image of one he has seen. The only differ- 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 159 

ence between constructive imagination and repro- 
ductive imagination, we have seen, is that the 
images resulting from reproductive imagination 
are copies of past experiences, while those result- 
ing from constructive imagination are not. Now 
it is altogether possible for one to suppose that 
what are really products of reproductive imagina- 
tion are products of constructive imagination, 
simply because the images resulting from the act 
of reproductive imagination, are not accompanied 
by a recollection of the original experiences. In 
other words, when the images of reproductive 
imagination are not accompanied by memory, they 
are confused with products of the constructive 
imagination. 

It may, perhaps, serve to make the distinction 
between the two clearer to call your attention to 
the fact that the exercise of the reproductive imag- 
ination is a part of which the memory of an absent 
object is the whole. There can be no memory of 
an absent object unless the image of it is in the 
mind, and that image is the product of the repro- 
ductive imagination. But having the image of 
the absent object in mind, and remembering that 
object are not the same. There is no complete act 



l6o LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

of memory until the image in the mind is recognized 
as the image of some partictdar object or thing 
already experienced. 

It is putting the same fact in another way to 
say that an exercise of reproductive imagination 
is a condition of the memory of an absent object. 
How was it that the song made you think of 
the friend you heard sing it a few evenings be- 
fore ? Through the laws of association, the song 
brought before the mind an image of the singer — 
the product, you will observe, of the reproductive 
imagination — and this image you knew as the 
image of your absent friend — an act of memory. 
We may state the order of dependence as fol- 
lows : the laws of association condition the activ- 
ity of the reproductive imagination, and the exer- 
cise of this is the condition of memory. 

Hoping that the difference between memory 
and reproductive imagination is now clear, I pro- 
ceed to call your attention in a little more 
detail, to the difference between the reproductive 
and the constructive imagination. But first of all, 
it would be well for you to try to realize the extent 
to which imagination is active in our mental life. 
There is not a moment in your waking life when 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY l6l 

images of one sort or another are not in your 
mind. Did you ever catch yourself when you 
were not thinking of something? It is safe to say 
that you never did, and these thoughts of things, 
these images, are products of imagination. When 
you are talking with a friend, or reading a book, 
you are exercising your imagination. When your 
pupils are listening to you intelligently, they are 
exercising their imagination. What kind ? 

To answer that question, all you have to do is 
to decide whether the images that go through their 
minds as they listen to you are copies of past ex- 
periences which they have had. Unless you are 
narrating an event which they have themselves 
observed, evidently they are not. The imagina- 
tion then which enables your pupils to understand 
you when you are talking to them is constructive. 

This fact is well worthy of your careful atten- 
tion. You have probably been accustomed to 
think of the constructive imagination as a power 
quite infrequently exercised. The novelist, you 
have supposed, makes great use of that kind of 
imagination, but ordinary people, under ordinary 
circumstances, have very little occasion for it. 
This supposition you now see to be radically false. 



l62 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

When you are talking to your pupils,, unless what 
you say causes certain images to arise in their 
minds — causes, in other words, a certain activity 
of their imaginations — they do not understand 
you ; and inasmuch as what you are trying to do 
is to give them an idea of something which they 
have not experienced, the imagination which you 
are trying to stimulate is the constructive. 

I have already called your attention to the fact 
that the constructive imagination depends upon 
the reproductive. It is the combination of images 
furnished by the reproductive imagination into 
new wholes that constitutes the activity of the 
constructive imagination. That being the case, 
you see from a new point of view the necessity of 
making a careful study of your pupils. You would 
not hire a man to build a house for you without 
furnishing the necessary materials. Be equally 
reasonable with your pupils, and do not expect 
them to build up images out of nothing. Many a 
little boy or girl attaches no sort of an idea to the 
word "ocean," simply because the teacher has not 
taken pains to dwell on the experiences which 
might have made the required activity of the con- 
structive imagination possible. In like manner, 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 163 

many a boy reads his history through two or three 
times and never forms a clear idea of a nation for 
the same reason. 

It cannot be too often repeated that no matter 
how clearly you see the necessity on theoretical 
grounds of making a study of the minds of your 
pupils, and no matter how constantly you make 
an attempt to put it into practice, there is but one 
way in the world in which you can be sure that 
you have not made a mistake, and that is by ques- 
tioning. You will constantly suppose that there 
has been an exercise of the constructive imagina- 
tion, when there has not been ; in other words, 
that your pupils understand what they do not 
understand, unless you make sure of the matter 
by questioning. You talk to your pupils about a 
great many matters which by long reading and 
reflection have become familiar to you. First 
comprehended by means of the activity of the 
constructive imagination, they are now understood 
simply by means of the reproductive imagination 
since all you do is to recall past processes of con- 
structive imagination. You are likely to fail to 
realize that any one should have any trouble with 
what is so simple to you and, I repeat, the only 



164 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

way to guard against the mistakes that would 
thus arise is by everlasting questioning. 

LIST OF QUESTIONS. 

i. Explain the terms "constructive" and "re- 
productive" as applied to the imagination. 

2. State the difference between reproductive 
imagination and memory. 

3. Illustrate it. 

4. Why is it that reproductive and construc- 
tive imagination are sometimes confused with 
each other? 

5. Show that an exercise of the reproductive 
imagination is the condition of the memory of a 
past object ? 

6. State the circumstances under which the 
activity of the constructive imagination is neces- 
sary. 

7. What bearing has this lesson on your 
work in teaching ? 




LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 165 

LESSON XIX. 

IMAGINATION. 

I N the last lesson, I tried to point out the 
difference between memory and the repro- 
ductive imagination, and the reproductive 
and the constructive imagination. It is altogether 
worth your while to dwell on this latter distinction 
with special care. Unless you take pains to dwell 
on the fact that all image-making is imagination, 
you will be sure to suppose that psychologists 
mean the same thing by imagination that people 
do when they use the term in ordinary conversa- 
tion. That would be a great mistake. When 
people in ordinary conversation speak of a man of 
great imagination, they never mean reproductive 
imagination ; nor do they have in mind the whole 
of constructive imagination. They mean that 
kind of constructive imagination which poets and 
painters and novelists possess in an unusually 
high degree, the power of combining ideas or im- 
ages furnished by reproductive imagination into 
new wholes without having received suggestions 



1 66 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

from anyone else. When you read aloud in my 
hearing a chapter in a novel, for instance, I exer- 
cise the constructive imagination provided I un- 
derstand you. But I exercise it under the influence 
of suggestions received from without through the 
sense of hearing. Now that kind of constructive 
imagination is not called imagination in the sense 
in which the term is used in ordinary language. 
The man who wrote the chapter used imagination, 
but I, who read it understandingly, do not use 
imagination — as people generally understand it. 
You remember, I hope, that there are three 
classes of mental facts, knowing, feeling, and will- 
ing. We exercise constructive imagination in con- 
nection with all of them. I have called your 
attention to the fact that in order to acquire 
knowledge, in order to gain knowledge from books, 
or from conversation, we have to exercise the con- 
structive imagination. There is only one other 
way of gaining knowledge, and that is by finding 
out a thing for ourselves, by discovery. When 
you solve a problem in arithmetic you discover 
the answer for yourself. You bring before your 
mind, imagine, the conditions stated in the prob- 
lem, and imagine step by step the results of these 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 167 

conditions until you reach the result called for, 
the answer. In like manner every instance of 
learning a thing for one's self depends upon the 
proper exercise of the constructive imagination. 
The detectives, for example, who worked up the 
Cronin case, had in the first place to get all the 
facts they could bearing on the murder, and then 
they began to make suppositions, imagine various 
things, to account for them. Simply collecting 
the facts was not finding out who murdered Cro- 
nin. To find out who committed the murder, 
various suppositions had to be made until that 
one was reached which alone accounted for the 
facts. 

It is the same with discovery in science. 
Men had been studying the motions of the heav- 
enly bodies for thousands of years before the time 
of Newton, but they had been unable to account 
for them. When Newton saw the apple fall, it 
occurred to him that the motions of the moon 
might result in part from an attempt of the moon, 
so to speak, to fall to the earth. Now the act of 
the mind alluded to by "it" in the phrase "it 
occurred to him," was an act of constructive imag- 
ination. And every step of the reasoning from 



l68 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

this act of constructive imagination until the proof 
of the law of gravitation was reached was made 
possible by further acts of constructive imagina- 
tion ; each step in the reasoning consisted in the 
perception of a certain relation between things 
realized by the mind through exercises of con- 
structive imagination. If this is so, the "this" 
being imagined constructively, then this, likewise 
imagined constructively, is so, and so on to the end. 

Hoping that it is now clear that we exercise 
constructive imagination in order in the first place 
to acquire knowledge, and in the second, to dis- 
cover things for ourselves, I pass on to say that we 
also exercise it for the gratification of the feeling. 

When you build air-castles, what are you 
doing ? Exercising the constructive imagination — 
bringing before your mind ideas and images of what 
you would like to be real. Why do you do it? 
Because it pleases you — because it gratifies your 
feelings. That is the reason why most people are 
so fond of reading novels. The events which the 
novelist enables them to realize, please them more 
than the prosaic realities of every day life. Sully 
has a paragraph on this subject that is worthy of 
careful attention. " The indulgence in these 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 169 

pleasures of the imagination," he says, u is legiti- 
mate within certain bounds. But it is attended 
with dangers. A youth whose mind dwells long 
on the wonders of romance may grow discontented 
with his actual surroundings, and so morally unfit 
for the work and duties of life. Or, what conies to 
much the same, he learns to satisfy himself with 
these imaginative indulgences ; and so, by the hab- 
itual severance of feeling from will, gradually be- 
comes incapable of deciding and acting, a result 
illustrated by the history of Coleridge and other 
" dreamers. " I read a story of a Russian lady 
which will illustrate this : She went to the theater 
and wept freely over the imaginary sufferings por- 
trayed on the stage, while the knowledge that her 
coachman was shivering in the cold on the outside 
waiting for her, did not cause the faintest sugges- 
tion of pity. 

But the feelings, in turn, exercise a powerful 
influence on the imagination. Tell me the char- 
acter of the images that habitually pass through 
your mind, and I will tell you what you like. As 
you can tell the tastes of a gourmand by noticing 
what he eats, so you can determine a man's likes 
and dislikes by knowing the images upon which 

12 



170 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

he habitually dwells. This explains the very great 
influences of the feelings on belief. Our beliefs 
follow from the facts before our minds, and the 
facts before our minds are those it gives us pleas- 
ure to think of. 

From this it follows that the exercise of the 
imagination may be attended with very grave in- 
tellectual results. 

The desire to imagine pleasant things may be 
stronger than the desire to imagine things that 
are true. All men of strong prejudices are exam- 
ples of this. They are so anxious to believe a 
particular thing — find so much pleasure in pic- 
turing it in their imagination and thinking of it as 
real — that they will not fairly consider the argu- 
ments that make against their favorite theory. 
Sully gives an excellent illustration of that. u If 
a child," he says, "is powerfully affected by the 
pathetic aspect of an historical incident, as the ex- 
ecution of Mary of Scotland, his mind, fascinated 
by this aspect of the event, w r ill be unfitted to 
imagine fully and impartially all the essential cir- 
cumstances of the case, so as to arrive at a com- 
plete grasp and understanding of the whole." 
Why unfitted ? Because, if the child is made to 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 171 

pity her, he will not give due weight to those facts 
which point in the direction of her guilt, simply 
because there is a pleasure in pity, and this pleas- 
ure would be gone if he thought of her as a bad 
woman, because in that case he would cease to 
pity her. 

I have been calling your attention to the fact 
that feeling depends to a greater or less extent on 
the exercise of the imagination and the same ac- 
tivity of the imagination, in turn, on the feelings. 
I hope it has occurred to you that I have only 
been saying in a more definite way what I called 
your attention to some time ago when I was talk- 
ing to you of the interdependence of knowing, 
feeling and willing. 

And I only repeat a fact to which I called your 
attention at the same time when I say that when 
you will to do this or that, it often depends upon 
constructive imagination. Men do rash things, 
foolish things, because they do not clearly realize 
the consequences of their conduct. Help a boy to 
form the habit of clearly and fully realizing the 
probable consequences of his conduct, help him to 
realize that the consequences of our acts depend 
not upon our wishes, but upon the nature of our 



172 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

acts, and you have gone a long way toward giving 
him the power and the habit of willing intelligently. 

LIST OF QUESTIONS. 

1. What is the sense in which the word im- 
agination is used in ordinary conversation ? 

2. What is meant by learning things by dis- 
covery ? 

3. Show by illustrations that when we learn 
anything by discovery we use the constructive im- 
agination. 

4. Show that we exercise constructive imag- 
ination for the gratification of the feelings. 

5. Illustrate the moral dangers of uncontrol- 
led imagination. 

6. Illustrate the intellectual dangers of un- 
controlled imagination. 

7. What is meant by the interdependence of 
knowing, feeling and willing? 

8. What has that to do with this lesson? 




LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 173 

LESSON XX. 

CONCEPTION. 



N the last lesson, I endeavored to show the 
wti$ relation of constructive imagination to 
knowing, feeling and willing. I pointed 
out the fact that in order to acquire knowledge, 
constructive imagination must frame ideas corres- 
ponding to those in the mind of the writer or 
speaker when he uses the words through which 
w 7 e acquire knowledge ; that in order to discover 
things for ourselves, we must frame ideas by con- 
structive imagination which correspond to the 
reality we are trying to discover. I tried to show 
also that constructive imagination plays an impor- 
tant part in the life of the feelings, that what we 
imagine has a great deal to do with w 7 hat we feel; 
and what we feel, in turn, with what we imagine. 
I pointed out the fact also that the relation be- 
tween the imagination and the will is just as close. 
Not only is it true, as I said in the last lesson, that 
what we will depends on the imagination, but 
when the will undertakes to do the bidding of the 



174 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

desires, so to speak, it depends at every step upon 
the activity of the imagination. From the boy's 
rabbit trap to the telephone of the inventor, every 
machine first exists in the mind of its maker as an 
idea or group of ideas which are products of the 
constructive imagination. 

I hope, then, that it is entirely clear that the 
opinion too often held — that the imagination is a 
faculty which teachers may ignore — is fundament- 
ally false. You must take it into account at every 
step in your teaching if you expect to succeed. 
You must see to it that the constructive imagina- 
tion whose activity you must constantly call into 
play, has the necessary materials to work with. 
Before you expect the little folks to attach any 
correct ideas to numbers that express long dis- 
tances, to such words as nation, government, mon- 
archy, despotism, you must see to it that they have 
the materials out of which these ideas are to be 
formed. But that is not all. In the lesson on 
knowing, feeling and willing, I think I called your 
attention to the important practical bearings of the 
fact, that knowing depends on feeling. I said that 
what coal is to an engine, and wind to a sailing-ves- 
sel, that motives — feelings — are to that activity 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 175 

of the mind we call knowing. I remind you of it 
here because imagination is a form of knowing, 
and for that reason all that I said about the impor- 
tance of supplying motives of the right sort to 
your pupils if you wish them to know, applies 
here. If, then, you expect to set the constructive 
imagination of your pupils to work, it is not 
enough for you to see that it has the proper mater- 
ials to work with, you must interest your pupils so 
that they may be willing to make the necessary 
exertions. 

One other condition should be observed : the 
demands made upon the constructive imagination 
should be careiully adjusted to its development. 
The intelligent mother will not wait until her child 
starts to school to begin the cultivation of his im- 
agination. She will begin to train his imagination 
at a very early age — by the time he is two years 
old — telling him short stories about the dog and 
cat and the chickens — stories that consist of two or 
three short sentences, gradually lengthening them, 
as he grows older, and introducing a larger and 
larger number of subjects as the sphere of his 
knowledge and interests widens. She will exer- 
cise his invention by encouraging him to tell stories, 



176 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

and when at the age of six he starts to school, you 
should immediately begin your work of training 
the imagination. In connection with training in 
the use of language, the pupil may be encouraged 
to give accounts of what he has seen on the way to 
school. This, you will note, will exercise his 
powers of observation as well as his imagination. 
You should tell him short historical stories — 
stories about Indians, their wigwams, their amuse- 
ments, their manner of life generally, so far as 
it is within the range of the child's interests and 
powers of comprehension, stories about the Puri- 
tans and the Cavaliers, dwelling much on such dif- 
ferences between them as the children can compre- 
hend, such as differences in dress, amusements, 
and so on. And the children should not only be 
encouraged to reproduce these stories — which 
could be used as a language lesson as well as a les- 
son in history and a means of cultivating the im- 
agination, but they should be encouraged to make 
up stories of their own on the basis of a picture, 
for example — and thus strengthen their construc- 
tive imagination on the active side. 

I hope it is not necessary to point out what 
excellent opportunities geography offers in this di- 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 177 

m rection. In all your geographical teaching your 
aim should be to form clear and definite pictures 
of the countries they are studying in the minds of 
your pupils. " If you were standing at such and 
such a point and should look in such and such a 
direction, what would you see?" is an example of 
questions you should be constantly asking in geog- 
raphy. Such questions will fix in the minds of 
your pupils the fact that one of the things for which 
they are studying geography is to get a definite 
picture of the world they are studying in their 
minds, and their answers will enable you to realize 
whether they have done it. 

I pass on now to speak of conception. It is 
not necessary to use many words in saying that 
the word "dog" does not mean the same as " this 
dog." "This dog" may be a long-haired, long- 
nosed, long-eared black dog with white spots, 
while "dog" is the name not only of this, but of 
all dogs whatever. The same is true, of course, of 
all general names. All general names are names 
of classes — names which are applicable to every 
individual of the class — while particular names, 
such as proper nouns and common nouns, limited 
by such words as "this" and "that," are names 



178 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

which can be applied in the same sense to but one 
individual. If this is clear, I think the definition 
of conception will be clear. A conception is that 
act of the mind which enables us to use general 
names intelligently. 

All observers of children have noticed that 
when they begin to talk, they do not use general 
names intelligently. A child hearing his mother 
call the dog sometimes Carlo and somtimes dog, 
uses the two names synonymously. They are both 
regarded by him as names of the one individual 
dog. As he gets more experience, he learns that 
while other animals are called dogs, this one indi- 
vidual alone bears the name of Carlo ; and as he 
comes to note the resemblance between the differ- 
ent animals calle'd dog, he sees that the names are 
given because of their resemblances. This act of 
the child — the apprehension of the fact that 
groups of individuals resemble each other in cer- 
tain respects, is conception, since from that time 
the general name is used, not because of the quali- 
ties that characterize the individual, but because 
of the qualities that characterize the class. 

We might define conception as that act of the 
mind which results in a concept. Such a defini- 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 1 79 

tion would, of course, throw no light on the nature 
of conception unless the nature of a concept were 
understood. I give.it here, because if the former 
definition has made the nature of conception clear, 
this will help you to understand what a concept is. 
If conception consists in the apprehension of re- 
semblances between groups of individuals, then a 
concept is the state of mind which results from 
conception — in one word, the product of con- 
ception. 

The two mental facts with which you are most 
likely to confuse concept, are percept and image. 
A percept, you remember, is that state of mind 
which directly results from the perception of an 
object. When you are looking at an orange, the 
idea of the orange which arises in your mind is a 
percept. When you are thinking of some one par- 
ticular orange, the idea in your mind is an image. 
When you are thinking of the class orange, of 
oranges in general, the idea in your mind is a 
concept. 

LIST OF QUESTIONS. 

i. Why is it important for the teacher to 
understand the conditions of constructive imagin- 
ation ? 



l8o LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

2. What are the conditions of constructive 
imagination ? 

3. How would you train the imagination in 
teaching history ? 

4. How in teaching geography ? 

5. Define conception. 

6. Explain your definition. 

7. What is the difference between a percept, 
an image, and a concept? 




LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY l8l 

LESSON XXI. 

CONCEPTION. 

.N the last lesson I said that a conception is 
that act of the mind which enables us to 
use general names intelligently, and that a 
concept is a product of conception. 

Concepts are formed both voluntarily and in- 
voluntarily. The first time a child sees a dog he 
has a percept of him, and when he recollects it he 
has an image. But as I pointed out in the last 
lesson, a concept is not to be confused with an 
image. If he were capable of giving an exact de- 
scription of the dog he would include in it a num- 
ber of characteristics that belong to all dogs, for 
example, that he eats, barks, has four feet, is hairy 
and so on. But many of his characteristics would 
be peculiar to that one dog, for example, his par- 
ticular color, size, and the like. Not until the 
child sees other dogs will he separate the charac- 
teristics that belong to dogs in general from those 
that belong to this particular dog. When he sees 
dogs of different colors, sizes, and so on, he will no 



l82 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

longer think that a dog must have a particular 
color or size, since experience will have taught him 
that an animal may be a dog without having some 
one particular color or size. In this way he will 
form an involuntary concept of dog. 

And here I think you can see clearly the dif- 
ference between an image and a concept. Your 
idea of any particular dog is an image ; your idea 
of dogs in general is a concept. 

But while a concept may be formed involun- 
tarily, such concepts are not very likely to be either 
distinct or accurate. Concepts are distinct when 
their various elements are so definitely conceived 
that they can be stated in words. Thus, I have a 
distinct concept of glass when I can tell the var- 
ious qualities that characterize it. Concepts are 
accurate when they include all the characteristics 
of the class commonly denoted by the class name 
and no others. In the nature of the case, it is un- 
likely that involuntary concepts will be either. 
Unless by a definite exercise of the will, it is very 
unlikely that a concept will be definite enough to 
make it possible to state its characteristics in words, 
or that it will include all those elements denoted 
by the class name and exclude all others. 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 183 

When children first start to school, unless 
they have been carefully instructed at home, 
nearly all their concepts are involuntary. They 
have observed the objects they see about them 
closely enough to learn their names, and so talk 
about them with a certain degree of intelligence. 
And because they can apply their names correctly, 
teachers are in great danger of thinking that the 
corresponding concepts are all that they need to 
be. But that is a mistake. " While an external 
object may be viewed by thousands in common," 
said Professor S. S. Green, the idea or image of it 
addresses itself only to the individual conscious- 
ness. My idea or image of it is mine alone — the 
reward of careless observation, if imperfect; of 
attentive, careful, and varied observation, if cor- 
rect. Between mine and yours a great gulf is 
fixed. No man can pass from mine to yours, or 
from yours to mine. Neither zn any proper sense 
of the term can mine be conveyed to you. Words 
do not convey thoughts ; they are not the vehicles 
of thoughts in any true sense of that term. A word 
is simply a common symbol which each associates 
with his own idea or image. 

" Neither can I compare mine with yours ex- 



184 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

cept through the mediation of external objects. 
And then how do I know that they are alike ; that 
a measure called a foot, for instance, seems as 
long to you as to me ? My idea of a new object 
which you and I observe together may be very 
imperfect. By it, I may attribute to the object 
what does not belong to it, take from it what 
does, distort its form, or otherwise pervert it. 
Suppose, now, at the time of observation we agree 
upon a word as a sign or symbol for the object or 
the idea of it. The object is withdrawn; the idea 
only remains — imperfect, in my case; complete 
and vivid in yours. The sign is employed. Does 
it bring back the original object? By no means. 
Does it convey my idea to your mind? Nothing 
of the kind; you would be disgusted with the 
shapeless image. Does it convey yours to me? 
No ; I should be delighted at the sight. What 
does it effect? It becomes the occasion for each to 
call up his own image. Does each now contem- 
plate the same thing? What multitudes of dissimi- 
lar images instantly spring up at the announce- 
ment of the same symbol ! — dissimilar not because 
of anything in the one source whence ,they are 
derived, but because of either an inattentive and 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 185 

imperfect observation of that source, or of some 
constitutional or habitual defect in the use of the 
perceptive faculty." 

This quotation shows clearly, particularly the 
italicized sentence, that a child may use the name 
of an object correctly without having a correct 
idea of the object. And if that is true it follows 
as a matter of course that he may use the name of 
a class of objects without having an accurate con- 
cept of the class. 

But there is another idea brought out by Pro- 
fessor Green in that paragraph which is quite as 
deserving of your attention. He says that you can- 
not convey your idea of an object to your pupils by 
the mere use of language. When your idea of a na- 
tion, for instance, rises before your mind, and you 
use the word in talking to your class in history, 
what they will think of will be not the idea in 
your mind, but the idea which they have associated 
with the word. That idea may be correct or in- 
correct, you can only tell w T hich, not by asking 
them if they understand it, for they may think so 
when they do not, but by carefully questioning 
them about it. And if they do not have a correct 

idea of it, the only way you can be sure of giving 
13 



l86 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

it to them is by bringing their minds into contact 
with peoples who are nations and peoples who are 
not, and fixing their attention, by your questions, 
upon the essential differences between them. For 
this reason, it is in the highest degree important 
for you to understand clearly the path which the 
mind takes in going to clear concepts. What is 
called imparting knowledge, consists to a consider- 
able extent in occasioning your pupils to form cer- 
tain concepts in their minds. If the conclusions 
we have reached are correct, you can do this by 
describing your own concept only on the supposi- 
tion that the words used in your description are 
the signs of exactly the same ideas in their minds 
as in yours. But this is very unlikely, in many 
cases, nearly impossible. The only sure way then 
of leading your pupils to correct concepts is to take 
them along the path which the mind naturally 
pursues when it is forming concepts for itself with- 
out aid from without. What is this path ? 

When the child finally came to have such a 
knowledge of dogs that the word dog called to his 
mind, not the image of some particular dog, but 
the concept of the class dogs, how did he get it ? 
Plainly, in the first place, by comparing different 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 187 

dogs. If he had never compared different dogs, 
if he had never fixed his attention upon two or 
more of them at the same time, he never would 
have discovered that some of the characteristics 
of dogs belong to them as individuals and others, 
as members of a class. 

But more than comparison was necessary. 
He had not only to fix his attention upon two or 
more dogs at the same time, he had to withdraw 
— abstract — his attention from their differences, 
and put it upon their resemblances. This done, 
but one more step was necessary to enable him to 
reach the concept, he had to generalize, he had, 
in other words, to think of those resemblances as 
qualities possessed by a class of objects, and 
then, the resemblance so conceived constituted a 
concept. 

These three processes then — comparison, or 
the fixing of the attention upon two or more 
objects at the same time ; abstraction, or the with- 
drawing the attention from the differences and 
putting it upon the resemblances between the 
objects attended to; and generalization, or the 
regarding of the resemblances as the qualities of 
a class of objects, are the three steps that lead to 



l88 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

the formation of a concept. And if you wish to 
give to those involuntary and therefore vague con- 
cepts of your pupils the definiteness which they 
ought to have, and if you wish them to form new 
concepts in a clear and definite way, you will 
accomplish your purpose not by defining the 
names of concepts, but by taking their minds 
slowly and carefully through these three processes 
— abstraction, comparison, and generalization. 

But while the formation of simple concepts is 
possible only as the mind begins with an examin- 
ation of particulars it is far from being a matter of 
indifference what kind of particulars it begins 
with. Bain's remarks on this subject are excellent. 
He says that particulars should be selected which 
show all the extreme varieties. A member of 
one of my classes told me this year that until he 
was eight years old, he thought all rivers were like 
the one that ran by his home. His attention had 
never been called to other varieties of rivers, and 
so his concept of a river was very incorrect. 

Begin also with particulars which give prom- 
inence to the main idea. If you are teaching 
your pupils what an island is, you would do well 
to call their attention at first to an island far from 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 189 

the mainland, in order that the characteristic qual- 
ity of an island, land surrounded by water, may be 
brought out in great prominence. 

And when you are trying to develop a concept 
select your particulars solely with reference to that. 
If your particulars have an interest in and of 
themselves, they will be likely to divert the mind 
and so defeat the object you have in view. 

And finally, stick to your purpose until it is 
accomplished. Accumulate particular after partic- 
ular until the desired concept is formed, allowing 
yourself to be tempted into 110 digression whatever. 

LIST OF QUESTIONS. 

i. State the two ways in which concepts are 
formed. 

2. Illustrate both, if you can. 

3. Show that children may use the names of 
objects correctly without having correct ideas of 
them. 

4. In what sense is it true that you cannot 
convey a concept to a pupil by words ? 

5. Illustrate. 

6. Define and illustrate comparison. 

7. Define and illustrate abstraction. 

8. Define and illustrate generalizaton. 




190 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

LESSON XXII. 

CONCEPTION. 

N the last lesson I said that there are three 
acts or processes involved in conception — 
comparison, abstraction, and generalization ; that 
before any one can form a concept he must compare 
two or more objects — fix his attention upon them 
at the same time ; abstract some quality — with- 
draw his attention from the qualities in which 
they are unlike and put it on some quality in 
which they are alike ; and generalize — think of 
the objects possessing the quality as members of a 
class. Not until this final stage is reached, until 
the abstracted quality is considered as the charac- 
teristic of a class of objects, is a concept formed. 
A concept, indeed, is the product that results from 
regarding some quality as the characteristic of 
a class. 

Possibly you may think I am guilty of an in- 
consistency. In the twentieth lesson I said that a 
concept is the product of conception, and that a 
conception is that act of the mind which enables 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 191 

us to use general names intelligently. Here I say 
that a concept is the product that results from re- 
garding some quality as the characteristic of a 
class. But in truth there is no inconsistency. Not 
until some quality is regarded as the characteristic 
of a class can we use general names intelligently. 
Words used intelligently are used as the signs of 
ideas. General names are the signs of ideas of 
classes of objects. But what is the idea of a class 
of objects except an idea of a characteristic which 
every member of the class must possess in order to 
be a member of it? When, then, I say that a con- 
cept is the result of that act of the mind which en- 
ables us to use general names intelligently, in 
effect, I say that it is the product that results from 
regarding some quality as the characteristic of a 
class, since I cannot use general names intelligently 
without regarding a quality or group of qualities 
as the characteristic of the class of objects which 
the general name denotes. 

If this is so, when should we teach our pupils 
general names? Evidently not until they need 
them. Language serves two purposes. In the 
first place, it enables us to preserve the results 
of our own thinking. When we have performed 



192 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

these processes of comparison, abstraction, and 
generalization — when, in a word, we have devel- 
oped a concept — if we did not give our concept a 
name, we might lose the results of our thinking. 
When we associate — mechanically, of course — a 
name with the concept, the name enables us to 
recall our concept, without repeating the labor of 
comparison, abstraction, and generalization, which 
enabled us to form it, in the first place. Plainly, 
then, so far as general names are useful in assist- 
ing us to preserve the results of our own thinking 
we have use for them only when we have formed 
the concept which we wish to preserve by means 
of them. And when we consider the other use of 
language we shall be led to the same conclusion. 
The other use of language, of course, is to com- 
municate ideas. The phrase " to communicate 
ideas, " is very misleading. As we saw in the last 
lesson, no such thing is possible in reality. What 
you do when you are said to communicate ideas, 
is to occasion the person to whom you are said to 
communicate them, to recall ideas and make com- 
binations of ideas similar to those in your own 
mind. This you are able to do by using a sign or 
symbol with which he has associated the same 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 193 

idea you have in your mind when you use it. 
Evidently, then, language cannot be used to com- 
municate ideas, or rather to occasion the recalling 
of ideas until you have yourself associated a sign 
or symbol with the idea you wish to be recalled, 
and until your hearer has formed the same asso- 
ciation. 

If this is clear, I think you can see the ab- 
surdity of teaching words without ideas. Words 
are like paper money ; their value depends on 
what they stand for. As you would be none the 
richer for possessing Confederate money to the 
amount of a million of dollars — because it can not 
be converted into gold and silver — so your pupils 
would be none the wiser for being able to repeat 
book after book by heart, unless the words were 
the signs of ideas in their minds. Words without 
ideas are an irredeemable paper currency. 

It is the practical recognition of this truth 
which has revolutionized the best schools of the 
country within the last quarter of a century. Pes- 
talozzi said that, "A man who has only word-wis- 
dom, is less susceptible to truth than a savage. 
The use of mere words produces men who believe 
they have reached the goal, because their whole 



194 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

life has been spent in talking about it, but who 
never ran toward it, because no motive impelled 
them to make the effort ; hence, I come to the con- 
viction that the fundamental error — the blind use 
of words in matters of instruction — must be ex- 
tirpated before it is possible to resuscitate life and 
truth. " 

" The blind use of words in matters of in- 
struction, " Pestalozzi did well to call " the funda- 
mental error.' ' He was not the first educational 
reformer who insisted on it. Montaigne, Coin- 
enius, Locke, Rousseau, had all insisted on the 
same idea, but they were in advance of their time ; 
the- world was not ready to listen to them. But 
after Prussia was thoroughly beaten by Napoleon 
at the battle of Jena, in 1806, when her capital 
city was in the hands of her conqueror, and she 
lay humiliated at his feet, it occurred to some of 
her leading men that the regeneration of the na- 
tion was to be sought in education. In this way 
it happened that the ideas of Pestalozzi were em- 
bodied in the schools of Germany, from which 
country they have gone into the schools of every 
civilized country in the 'world.* 

* It is to me a very interesting fact that Pestalozzi went to Paris 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 195 

In what did the reform inaugurated by Pesta- 
lozzi consist ? In the substitution of the intelligent 
for the blind use of words. He reversed the edu- 
cational engine. Before his time, teachers expec- 
ted their pupils to go from words to ideas ; he 
taught them to go from ideas to words. He 
brought out the fact upon which I have been in- 
sisting — that words are utterly powerless to create 
ideas, that all they can do is to help the pupil to 
recall and combine ideas already formed. With 
Pestalozzi, therefore, and with those who have 
been imbued with his theories, the important mat- 
ter is the forming of clear mid definite ideas. 

But how can such ideas be formed ? By com- 
parison, abstraction and generalization, and by 
combining concepts so formed into complex con- 
cepts. And that explains why Pestalozzian 
teachers have made so much use of object lessons. 
Realizing that the only way the mind can form 
ideas of objects is by comparing them, then ab- 

early in this century in order to try to induce Napoleon to reform the edu- 
cational system of France in accordance with his ideas. Napoleon said he 
had no time to bother his head with questions of A, B, C Prussia took 
the time, and the result was that when Prussia and France met again on 
the field of battle nearly seventy years later, the soldiers of Prussia, edu- 
cated in accordance with Pestalozzi's ideas, completely routed the armies 
of France. 



196 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

stracting some quality, then generalizing it, they 
have given systematic courses of Object Lessons 
in order that they might develop clear and definite 
concepts of objects in the minds of their pupils. 

But systematic object teaching is not the only 
or indeed the chief way of teaching in harmony 
with this law of the mind. Object teaching will 
be the method chiefly employed by intelligent 
primary teachers, because the great intellectual 
need of young children is clear and definite con- 
cepts of objects. Since all our concepts are either 
simple or complex, and since, of course, simple 
concepts must precede complex concepts, evident- 
ly the first step in education should consist in fur- 
nishing the mind with a stock of simple concepts. 
And since the mind of a child is for the most part 
employed with objects, since his interests lead him 
to direct his attention to the external world, plain- 
ly the thing to be done is to give him simple con- 
cepts of objects. But whatever the subject of 
thought, in order to get its simple concepts the 
mind must take the same path, pursue the same 
course, compare, abstract, generalize. 

Whatever the nature of the facts studied, 
whether objects which can be brought into the rec- 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 197 

itation room, or objects which are physically inac- 
cessible, or facts which cannot be correctly de- 
scribed as objects, such as the facts of history, 
mental facts, mathematical facts, the intelligent 
teacher will lead his pupils to begin with an exam- 
ination and comparison of them, then go on to 
note their resemblances and differences, then to 
make generalizations, unless he is sure that they 
have a stock of perfectly definite, simple concepts, 
by the combination of which they can form the 
complex concepts he desires. Such a method of 
teaching has well been called the Objective Method 
or Objective Teaching, since it is an application of 
the method of teaching by Object Lessons to every 
department of instruction. 

LIST OF QUESTIONS. 

1. Define comparison, abstraction, and gen- 
eralization. 

2. Give the definition of a concept in to-day's 
lesson. 

3. Show that there is no inconsistency be- 
tween this and the one given in a previous lesson. 

4. State the two uses of language. 



198 LKSSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

5. Explain the sentence, words without ideas 
are an irredeemable paper currency. 

6. What do you think Pestalozzi meant by 
the blind use of words ? 

7. In what did the reform inaugurated by 
Pestalozzi consist? 

8. Explain the Objective Method of teaching. 







LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 199 

LESSON XXIII. 

CONCEPTION. 

N the last lesson I said that the reform in- 
augurated by Pestalozzi consisted in the 
substitution of the intelligent for the blind 
use of words, and I gave a brief description of the 
Objective Method of teaching — the method upon 
which Pestalozzians mainly rely to effect this sub- 
stitution. 

The very great importance of this method in- 
clines me to think that it would be wise for you to 
spend a little more time in making an effort to get 
such a comprehension of it as will enable you to 
use it in your work in teaching from day to day. 
And I do not know how I can bring the subject 
before you more clearly than by making further 
quotations from the author from whom I quoted 
in the last lesson, Professor S. S. Green. The 
method of teaching by object lessons, the Objective 
Method, he says, u is that which takes into account 
the whole realm of Nature and Art so far as the 
child has examined it, assumes as known only 



200 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY. 

what the child knows — not what the teacher 
knows — and works from the well known to the 
obscurely known, and so onward and upward until 
the learner can enter the fields of science or ab- 
stract thought. It is that which develops the ab- 
stract from the concrete — which develops the idea 
then gives the term. It is that which appeals to 
the intelligence of the child, and that through the 
senses until clear and vivid concepts are formed, 
and then uses these concepts as something real and 
vital. It is that which follows Nature's order — 
the thing, the concept, the word ; so that when 
this order is reversed, — the word, the concept, the 
thing, — the chain of connection shall not be 
broken. The word shall instantly occasion the con- 
cept, and the concept shali be accompanied with 
the firm conviction of a corresponding external 
reality. It is that which insists upon something 
besides mere empty verbal expressions in every 
school exercise, — in other words, expression and 
thought in place of expression and no thought. 
It is that which makes the school a place 
where the child comes in contact with realities 
just such as appeal to his common sense as ^when 
he roamed at pleasure in the fields, — and not a 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 201 

place for irksome idleness. It is that which re- 
lieves a child's task only by making it intelligible 
and possible, not by taking the burden from him. 
It bids him examine for himself, discriminate for 
himself, and express for himself, — the teacher, the 
while, standing by to give hints and suggestions — 
not to relieve the labor. In short, it is that which 
addresses itself directly to the eye external or in- 
ternal, which summons to its aid things present, 
or things absent, things past or things to come and 
bids them yield the lessons which they infold,— 
which deals with actual existence and not with 
empty dreams — a living realism and not a fossil 
dogmatism. 

It will aid any teacher in correcting dogmatic 
tendencies by enlivening his lessons and giving 
zest to his instructions. He will draw from the 
heavens above and from the earth beneath, or from 
the waters under the earth, from the world with- 
out and the world within. He will not measure 
his lessons by pages nor progress by fluency of ut- 
terance. He will dwell in living thought, sur- 
rounded by living thinkers, leaving at every point 
the impress of an objective and a subjective reality. 

To him, an exercise in geography will not be a 

14 



202 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

stupid verbatim recitation of descriptive para- 
graphs, but a stretching out of the mental vision to 
see in living picture, ocean and continent, moun- 
tain and valley, river and lake, not on a level plain, 
but rounded tip to conform to the curvature of a 
vast globe. The description of a prairie on fire, 
by the aid of the imagination, will be wrought up 
into a brilliant object lesson. A reading lesson de- 
scriptive of a thunder storm on Mount Washington 
will be something more than a mere conformity to 
the rules of the elocutionist. It will be accompa- 
nied by a concept wrought into the child's mind, 
outstripped in grandeur only by the scene itself. 
The mind's eye will see the old mountain itself 
with its surroundings of gorge and cliff, of wood- 
land and barren rock, of deep ravine a^d craggy 
peak. It will see the majestic thunder cloud 
moving up, with its snow-white summits resting on 
wall as black as midnight darkness. The ear will 
almost hear the peals of muttering thunder as they 
reverberate from hill to hill." 

This long extract is worth all the study you 
can find time to put upon it. A thorough compre- 
hension of it and the practical appreciation of it 
will revolutionize your methods of teaching as com- 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 203 

pletely as have been the methods of teaching in the 
best schools of the country in the last twenty-five 
years. But there are two or three sentences in it 
to which I wish particularly to call your attention. 
Professor Green says that the Objective Method ap- 
peals to the intelligence of the child through the 
senses until clear and vivid concepts are formed, and 
then uses these concepts as something real and vital. 
What does he mean by that ? 

I said in your last lesson that whatever the 
nature of the facts studied, whether objects which 
can be brought into th.e recitation room, such as 
coal, glass, water, and the like, or objects which 
are physically inaccessible, such as are studied in 
geography and astronomy, or facts which can not 
be correctly described as objects, such as mental 
facts, historical facts, and the like, the Objective 
Method of teaching leads the pupil to begin with 
an examination of the facts ; instead of beginning 
with inferences about the facts, it puts the pupil 
face to face with the facts, and leads him to make 
his own inferences. How is that possible when 
we are not dealing with dbjects in the immediate 
presence of the pupil? 

I hinted at the answer to that question in the 
last lesson. 



204 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

When we are dealing with facts or objects 
which our pupils can not observe for themselves 
at first hand, we must develop in their minds as 
nearly as we can, the same vivid concept that 
would result from a careful observation of the 
reality. That is what Professor Green has in 
mind in the sentence to which I have called your 
attention. A concept so vivid as to be something 
real and vital, is a concept which can be used by 
the constructive imagination in forming in the 
mind complex concepts of things only a little less 
vivid than would result from a first hand observa- 
tion of the reality. And he has in mind the same 
idea when he says that the Objective Method takes 
into the account the whole realm of Nature and 
Art so far as the child has examined it ; assumes 
as known only what the child knows — not what 
the teacher knows. For so long as the teacher 
keeps within the child's knowledge, he presents 
to him simple concepts which he can combine into 
complex concepts, and thus clearly and vividly 
realize facts and realities which are beyond the 
range of his observation, but which he can com- 
pare and abstract and generalize from, as though 
he had seen them at first hand. 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 205 

When Professor Green says that the Objective 
Method addresses itself to the eye external or in- 
ternal, he means to call attention to the fact that 
there are realities which cannot be cognized by 
the senses, such as mental facts, but which never- 
theless are to be studied in the same way. 

I think this lesson will enable you to see that 
one of the favorite doctrines of current pedagogy 
— first the idea, then the word — is inaccurate. 
In primary instruction it does indeed state with 
great accuracy the proper method of proceeding 
for the most part. But even here the teacher must 
sometimes violate it. No primary teacher can al- 
ways confine himself to objects which have some- 
times been within the range of the pupil's obser- 
vation. He must sometimes take concepts formed 
from actual observation and build out of them con- 
cepts of realities which the pupil has never seen. 
A more accurate statement is — first, the reality, 
then the play of the mind about the reality. But 
that last clause needs explanation which I will try 
to give in another lesson. 



206 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

LIST OF QUESTIONS. 

i. In what did the reform inaugurated by 
Pestalozzi consist ? 

2. Why should we take into account in our 
teaching, the whole realm of Nature and Art, so 
far as it is known to the child ? 

3. Why must we first appeal to the intelli- 
gence of the child through the senses ? 

4. What is meant when it is said that the 
Objective Method addresses itself to the internal 
eye? 

5. Show that the dictum — first, the idea, 
then the word — is inaccurate. 

6. Why is it more true of primary instruction 
than of any other ? 

7. State your idea of — "First, the reality, 
then the play of the mind about the reality. " 

8. What is constructive imagination ?. 




LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 207 

LESSON XXIV. 

CONCEPTION. 

N the last lesson, I said that one of the 
favorite dictums of current Pedagogy — 
first, the idea, and then the word — is mis- 
leading and inaccurate ; because, in many in- 
stances, you have to employ words in order to 
get the idea before the minds of your pupils. For 
this maxim I suggested the following as a substi- 
tute: First, the reality, and then the play of the 
mind about the reality. I suggested the somewhat 
indefinite phrase — play of themiind — because a 
more definite expression would not be sufficiently 
comprehensive. In some cases, what you want of 
your pupils is not primarily intellectual action, or 
action of the knowing side of the mind at all. 
You wish to bring their mind face to face with a 
certain reality in order to excite the appropriate 
feelings. That, for instance, would be the object 
of an intelligent teacher in teaching such a read- 
ing-lesson as the one described in the last lesson. 
And the same is true, for the most part, in all 



208 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

teaching of literature. You wish to get the 
thoughts and sentiments of the piece in the 
minds of your pupils in order that they may 
have the proper feelings — appreciation, admira- 
tion, and the like. In such cases in the maxim : 
First, the reality, and then the play of the mind 
about the reality — u the play of the mind" means 
a certain activity of the emotional side of the 
mind. 

But even where the play of the mind you seek 
to occasion is intellectual, the kinds of intellectual 
activity which the Objective Method aims at are so 
different in different circumstances that any very 
definite term will not accurately describe them. In 
a first lesson on verbs, fo'r instance, you might be- 
gin by asking the children to clap their hands, then 
ask them to tell you some other things that they 
could do. And when they had given you a good 
many examples, such as walk, skip, jump, hop, run 
play, fight, bite, eat, drink, and so on, you might 
tell them that such words are called verbs. In 
such a case you would have first given the idea of 
action by making them think of a number of kinds 
of action, and after giving them the idea you 
w T ould have fixed it in their minds by giving them 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 209 

its symbol, verb. All this is in strict conformity 
with the Objective Method. After comparing all 
those different kinds of action, and abstracting from 
their differences, you hope that they will generalize 
the quality of action, and to help them to do this, 
you tell them that all such words are called verbs. 
But fiiow you want them to know the definition of 
verb. How will you teach it ? Will you say : 
" Children, you notice that all these words express 
action, and as they are all verbs, you see that a 
verb is a word that expresses action. So I w^ant 
you to write this sentence on your slates and learn 
it by heart for the next recitation: A verb is a 
word that expresses action. " That is one way of 
teaching the definition of a verb, but that is not 
the correct way ; it is not in accordance w 7 ith the 
Objective Method. To use the Objective Method 
you would begin something in this way : u Chil- 
dren, I have just told you that all these words are 
verbs ; now, can you tell me what a verb is ?" Pos- 
sibly, some little fellow would be most impressed 
by the idea of the action they had actually per- 
formed, and if so, he might say : u A verb is some- 
thing you do with your hands," instead of saying, 
" that is not so," it would be better to get the class 



2IO LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

to repeat the other examples of verbs you had given 
them, and when one of them said that u jump " is 
a verb, you would call the attention of the first 
little fellow to the fact that you do not jump with 
your hands, and in this way, as I think you see, 
you could lead them step by step to make a defini- 
tion for themselves. In so doing, you would be 
giving another example of the Objective Method. 
In the first case you used it to develop the idea 
expressed by the word verb ; in the second, to get 
a definition of the word that expresses the idea you 
had tried to develop in their minds. In these two 
cases the phrase, play of the mind about the reality 
means two quite different things, though in both it 
describes a certain activity of the intellectual or 
knowing side of the mind. 

In the following example which I take from 
history it means something different still. Your 
class learns from you or a book — so far as the Ob- 
jective Method goes it makes no difference which 
— that the constitution of the United States for- 
bade Congress to pass any law prohibiting the 
importation of slaves prior to 1808, and then they 
learn that Congress passed such laws in 1808 — in 
other words, just as soon as the constitution made 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 211 

it possible for them to do it -^-unanimously. You 
ask your class what they would infer from that ? 
They will be likely to say that it indicates that 
Congress wanted to do all it could to limit slavery. 
Without saying whether they are mistaken or not, 
you go on and tell them of the penalty Congress 
affixed to the violation of the law, and then call 
their attention to the fact that although the law 
was constantly violated and every body knew it, 
this penalty was very rarely inflicted, and then ask 
what that signifies. What you are asking for, you 
see, is an inference from certain facts. Here the 
reality is a historical fact, and the play of the mind 
about the reality which you are seeking to occa- 
sion is an inference based on the reality. 

In the following example "the play of the 
mind" means something different still. You are 
giving a lesson on fractions, I will suppose. You 
want them to see that in order to add fractions 
which have like denominators, they have simply 
to add the numerators. You give a boy one- 
sixth of an apple and tell him to write the sym- 
bol that expresses that on the board ; then you 
give him two-sixths, and then three-sixths, in each 
case, requiring him to write the symbol on the 



212 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

board. Then you ask him how many sixths he 
has and he will be likely to say — six. Then yon 
ask him to tell you what he has done and he will 
tell you, or by judicious questioning you can get 
him to tell you, that he has added three, two and 
one. "But what are three, two and one ?" "Num- 
erators," he will tell you if the right kind of 
teaching has preceded this lesson. "Then what 
have you done ?" "I have added the numerators 
together." What then must you do in order to 
add fractions ? "Add their numerators together." 
Here, the play of the mind wanted is a descrip- 
tion of a process. The reality with which you 
bring his mind into contact is a process, the cor- 
rectness of which he is able to see by the exercise 
of his own powers, and after seeing, so to speak, 
the process, you endeavor to get him so to reflect 
upon it as to make a correct description of it. 

I have tried to explain the Objective Method 
at such length, because, as I think, I have said 
already, I regard it as the most important princi- 
ple in Pedagogy, so far, at least, as that science 
relates to the training of the intellect. To have 
a clear comprehension of the Objective Method, 
and to apply it rigidly in all departments of your 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 213 

school, would be to revolutionize your methods of 
teaching, unless, indeed, your methods are already 
the best. 

But even when you have the clearest possible 
comprehension of it, you may fail in your attempts 
to apply it, because you try to bring the minds of 
your pupils into contact with realities which they 
cannot comprehend — try, in other words, to bring 
their minds into contact with realities with which 
they cannot be brought into contact in their state 
of development. You see, of course, that you 
could not give a blind boy an object lesson based 
on the sense of sight. No more can you intelli- 
gently use the Objective Method when the reali- 
ties are beyond the range of your pupil's compre- 
hension. 

Further, it must be borne in mind that the 
Objective Method* is not the best method to use 
when your aim is to communicate information. 
But so far as you aim to supply to the minds of 

* It doubtless has not escaped the attention of my careful readers 
that the Objective Method is based in part on laws of the mind, which we 
have not yet considered. Those laws, however, are so generally known 
that I thought it would conduce to clearness to assume that they would be 
known, and discuss the Objective Method in connection with Object teach- 
ing, which is but a single application of it. 



214 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

your pupils the conditions of development, so far, 
in one word, as your aim is the strengthening and 
unfolding of all their powers, so far you should 
aim to use the Objective Method. 

LIST OF QUESTIONS. 

i. I say in this lesson that "the play of the 
mind about the reality " sometimes means a cer- 
tain action of the emotional side of the mind. 
Explain. 

2. Give illustrations of it, based on your ex- 
perience in teaching. 

3. State and explain and illustrate all the dif- 
ferent senses in which, as I have shown in the 
lesson, the phrase may be used. 

4. What are the two ends of education? 

5. Show that you may understand the Ob- 
jective Method and fail in your attempt to apply it. 

6. When is the Objetive Method inapplicable? 




LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 215 

LESSON XXV. 

CONCEPTION . 

N speaking of involuntary concepts, I said 
that they were not likely to be either dis- 
tinct or accurate, and by distinct concepts, 
I explained that I meant those whose elements are 
represented clearly enough to make it possible for 
us to state them in words. I said that it is quite 
possible to be able to recognize a thing without 
being able to tell how you do it. 

This distinction is of so much importance 
that it is worth while to dwell on it at greater 
length. What is the explanation of it ? How is 
it possible to recognize a thing without being able 
to tell how you do it ? Plainly, there is a great 
difference between that knowledge of a thing 
which one has when he knows it when he sees it, 
and entire ignorance of it: in what does it consist? 

Before attempting to answer the question, it 
should be carefully noted that I am not speaking 
of things as individuals but as members of classes. 
I may see a stranger today, and tomorrow, although 



2l6 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

I am entirely unable to describe him, I may recog- 
nize him when I see him again. In that case, the 
recognition may be a simple act of memory based 
on the laws of association. When I see him to- 
morrow, in accordance with the laws of the asso- 
ciation I may recall the fact that I saw him yester- 
day, and if so, I could correctly describe the facts of 
my experience by saying that I recognize him as 
the individual whom I saw yesterday. 

But conception, it will be remembered, is that 
act of the mind which enables us to use general 
names intelligently, and the question, therefore, 
which we have to answer is, How is it that we can 
recognize an individual the first time we see it as a 
member of a given class without being able to tell 
why we do it ? I think the reason is that we have 
fixed our attention upon the characteristics of the 
class closely enough to be able to recognize mem- 
bers of it when we see them, but not closely 
enough to be able to tell why we do it. I have 
already called your attention to the fact that we 
may have sensations without knowing that we have 
them and I believe that sensations are by no means 
all of the mental facts which we may have without 
being conscious of them. You undoubtedly have 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 21 7 

a motive for everything you do, but if you try to 
find out what it is in any given case, the chances 
are that you will not be able to do it. You may 
indeed by habitual and careful introspection 
acquire some skill in dragging into consciousness 
these unconscious mental facts. As a watchmaker 
can detect minute objects in a watch, that would es- 
cape the attention of ordinary people, so a trained 
psychologist can bring into consciousness men- 
tal facts that would hide themselves in the dark- 
ness of unconsciousness from the ordinary seeker. 
But the more you study your own experience, the 
more certain you will be that to have a mental fact 
and to be conscious that you have it, are two very 
different things. And you will see that as in the 
case of our motives so in general, unconscious 
mental facts may and do exert a very direct and 
powerful influence on the mental facts of which 
we are conscious. 

Hence, as I think, it comes to pass that w r e 
recognize things as members of classes without 
being able to state the characteristics of the class ; 
we have, as it were, an unconscious knowledge of 
the characteristics of the class and so know them 

when we see them. I have said that the case of 
15 



2l8 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

which I am speaking is a knowledge of individuals 
as members of classes, and not of individuals as 
such. But there is one kind of knowledge of in- 
dividuals as such that is to be explained in the 
same way. The older psychologists used to dwell 
much on the distinction between original and 
acquired perceptions. I have said nothing about 
it because I doubt if it exists. I incline to think 
that all our perceptions are acquired. But whether 
they all are or not, most of them certainly are ; 
among them, all our perceptions of distance. 
When you see an object, you at once judge of its 
distance and within certain limits with entire con- 
fidence, but unless you are a trained psychologist 
you cannot tell why you do it ; you draw a very 
positive inference without being able to state the 
data ! Reach a very positive conclusion without 
being able to state the premises ! 

The explanation, as I think, is that the data, 
the premises are unconscious mental facts. 

But whatever the explanation, it is certain that 
we recognize many objects as members of classes 
without being able to tell why we do it. It is un- 
necessary to say that in very many cases we can 
state many of the characteristics of an object by 



WESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 219 

means of which we know it. If called upon, for 
instance, to state 'why you know that such and 
such an object is a horse you could give a detailed 
answer to the question because you are clearly con- 
scious of many of the qualities that distinguish 
it from all the other animals you have seen. 

For the sake of clearness, let us call the first 
class of concepts, the concepts which we have of 
objects without being able to tell how or why we 
do it, implicit concepts. We may bring out the 
contrast between implicit and distinct concepts by 
calling the latter explicit. 

It is the difference between these two kinds of 
concepts, or rather the fact that a concept may be 
implicit without being explicit, that constitutes 
the chief, if not the whole, difficulty of analysis and 
parsing. I once saw quite a number of fairly intelli- 
gent students puzzled over this sentence : " The 
lady grew tall, queenly and beautiful.' ' They were 
inclined to think that " tall," "queenly," and "beau- 
tiful" were adverbs. If they really had in- 
terpreted these words as adverbs, they would not 
have understood the sentence. If they had sup- 
posed that the words in question qualified the ac- 
tion instead of the person spoken of their interpre- 



220 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

tation of the sentence would have been ridiculously 
incorrect, and the fact that they did understand it, 
proves that they did not in reality attribute to the 
words the function of adverbs. If any one in the 
class had been asked to state what he had learned 
about the lady in the sentence, he would have said 
that she was tall, queenly, and beautiful, but in 
spite of this, many of them said that the words 
were adverbs. Why ? Because they could not read 
the facts of their own consciousness. They had an 
implicit knowledge of the meaning of the words, 
but they could not make it explicit. 

If your study of Psychology induces you to 
study the minds of your pupils and the children 
whom you meet, as carefully as I hope it may, 
you will learn that there is some truth in the 
remark which we often laugh at children for 
making, " I know, but I can not tell." They 
know when they have implicit concepts ; when 
they not only know, but can tell what they know, 
they have explicit concepts. A large part of 
elementary teaching, indeed, consists in helping 
pupils to transform implicit into explicit concepts. 
But the process must not be forced. And inas- 
much as children can form . implicit concepts of 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 221 

many things long before they can form explicit 
concepts, you should often be satisfied when you 
have made yourself- sure that they understand you 
or the book they are reading, without requiring 
them to state their concepts in words. In teach- 
ing young children reading, for example, you 
should make sure that they know the meaning of 
all the words in the lesson. But if you try to 
give yourself this certainty by asking them to 
define the words, you will ask for explicit con- 
cepts, and they have not these to give you. You 
must resort to other methods. You can get them 
to make up sentences and use the word which you 
are trying to teach them. You can use the word 
in different sentences yourself — in some cases cor- 
rectly and in others incorrectly — and ask them to 
tell you in which it is used correctly. Such methods 
imply the possession of only implicit concepts, 
and therefore are proper in such cases. 

If you ask for a rule to enable you to de- 
cide when it is proper to ask for explicit concepts, 
I am obliged to say that I cannot give it to you 
nor can any one. It is a question for your own 
tact to answer under the guidance of experience 
and a careful observation and studv of children. 



222 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

LIST OF QUESTIONS. 

1. What is an implicit concept? 

2. Give illustrations. 

3. What is an explicit concept? 

4. Give illustrations. 

5. Is there such a thing as unconscious 
knowledge ? 

6. Explain your answer. 

7. Show how and why pupils often have dif- 
ficulty with parsing and analysis. 

8. What bearing has the distinction between 
implicit and explicit concepts on the teaching of 
reading ? 

9. Is there any difference between implicit 
and explicit concepts? 







LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 223 

LESSON XXVI. 

JUDGMENT. 

( S a conception is that act of the mind which 
^© enables us to use general names intelligent- 
ly, so a judgment is that act of the mind 
which enables us to use a proposition intelligently. 
I see a man whom I do not know very well. I am 
uncertain whether it is John Smith or his brother. 
As long as I am uncertain, there will be no mental 
action which can be expressed by the proposition : 
That man is John Smith. 

But as I look at him closely, I notice a scar 
on his right cheek just under his eye, and then I 
remember to have heard that John Smith once re- 
ceived a severe wound there. Then my mind 
passes from its state of doubt into a state of cer- 
tainty, and that act of my mind is expressed by 
the proposition : That man is John Smith. 

A moment's reflection will enable you to see 
that such judgments are rendered possible by the 
laws of association. Through the laws of associa- 
tion I thought of the name of John Smith and of the 



224 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

name of his brother in the supposed case. But there 
is a wide difference between the judgment and the 
simple result of the laws of association. As long 
as my mental state is due simply to the laws of 
association, I have a percept and two concepts in 
mind, the percept of the man and the concepts of 
John Smith and his brother. But when I have 
formed a judgment, the percept and the concept of 
John Smith are fused into one, and, expressing this, 
I say: "This man is John Smith," which is only 
another way of saying " this man and John Smith 
are the same." 

The judgment is the mental act and the prop- 
osition is the sentence in which we express the 
judgment. 

Just as there are concepts which we cannot 
describe in words, so there are judgments which 
are not stated in propositions as we think them, 
and which cannot be so stated without ceasing to 
be implicit and becoming explicit, since we mean 
by implicit judgment one that is not stated in 
words. 

Inasmuch as with the exception of such prop- 
ositions as Tully is Cicero, the subject or predicate 
or both is a concept, it is evident that explicit 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 225 

judgments are not formed until after concepts are 
developed. But this is not true of implicit judg- 
ment ; in order that the processes of comparison, 
abstraction and generalization, which result in a 
concept may take place, there must be implicit 
judgments. 

The best way for you to realize the truth of 
this is to carefully examine the facts of your own ex- 
perience. If you do, I think you will find that judg- 
ment, the process of bringing things together in 
the relation of subject and predicate, is the unit of 
all mental action. Certainly you cannot state what 
the mind does when it compares things except 
in some such forms as these : "I see and think of 
two or more things; " " these things are similar to 
each other, " which propositions, of course, express 
judgments. If that is not a correct account of 
what takes place in your mind when you compare 
things, you can blot out the subject, so to speak, 
and have something intelligible left. Let us try it 
and see. Taking the first sentence and blotting 
out the subject, we have left something like this : 
! There is a thought of two or more things at the 
same time." But does that really mean anything 
unless it is understood that this thought is in some 



226 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

one's mind? It is not necessary to state the words 
which I have italicized because when you see or 
hear such a sentence as the above you immediately 
supply it in order to make it intelligible. But the 
sentence, "Some one is thinking of two or more 
things at the same time expresses a judgment." 

Take the second sentence, " These resemble 
each other," and if you blot out the subject you 
have left only " resembling things." But is it not 
clear that those words, if they have any meaning 
whatever, mean precisely the same thing as the 
sentence of which they are an abbreviation ? Is it 
not evident that if they have any meaning to you 
it is because you use them to express an affirma- 
tion or denial t You say to me, " Resembling 
things," and I say: "Well, what about them." 
Do you mean that you like them or dislike them ; 
that they exist or do not exist ? If you reply : "I 
do not say anything about them," I think it is 
evident that the words express no mental action. 
Perhaps you will remind me that when children 
first begin to talk they do not use sentences, but 
single words, as dog, cat, bread, and the like. True, 
but although they speak single words, they think 
sentences. When a child says " dog," he means 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 227 

" I see a dog," or " There goes a dog." When he 
says " bottle " or " bread," he means, " I want my 
bottle," " Give me bread." 

What we have just seen to be true of compar- 
ison, is equally true of abstraction. Abstraction, it 
will be remembered, is that act of the mind in which 
we withdraw our attention from the unlike qual- 
ities of objects, and put it on those which are alike. 
But what help would the process be in the way of 
forming a concept if we did not think that the 
qualities abstracted belonged to the objects. In 
other words, if the action of our minds could not 
be described by some such words as these, " those 
objects have such and such like qualities," how 
could the process help us to form a concept of ob- 
jects resembling each other in such and such par- 
ticulars ? Evidently, it could not do it all. Only 
as the process of abstraction is a process of think- 
ing that the objects considered have like qualities, 
only, in other words, as itisaprocess of judging, is 
it a step on the road that terminates in a concep- 
tion. 

And the same is true of generalization. What 
is generalization ? It is the process of thinking of 
the qualities abstracted as the basis of a class. We 



228 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

compare two or more objects — put our attention 
on them at the same time — then abstract — fix our 
attention on one or more points in which they are 
alike, then generalize — think of all the objects 
which do or may possess these qualities as mem- 
bers of a class. What could that process mean if 
we thought of qualities without thinking of 
the objects to which they belong? Evidently 
nothing. Inasmuch as generalization is the termi- 
nus of the road that leads to concepts, and inas- 
much as a concept is the thought of a class of ob- 
jects, which resemble each other in certain partic- 
ulars, evidently unless the act of generalization is 
an act in which we think of the qualities as belong- 
ing to objects, it is of no use in the way of helping 
us to form concepts. 

I am very much afraid you will find this 
rather abstract. But if you can bring yourself to 
study carefully and attentively the facts of your 
own experience, it will give you no trouble. You 
will then see for yourself how meaningless and un- 
intelligible anything must be that is not thought 
of under the form of a judgment. u The sun," 
"the railroad, " u the newspaper" — do these words 
express thoughts? What have you said? Affirm 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 229 

or deny something of these subjects and you 
have thought something; until then, they signify 
nothing. 

I do not wish to be understood as maintain- 
ing that our mental life begins with judgments. 
When I say that judging is the unit of mental ac- 
tion, I mean that all thought is a process of bring- 
ing subjects and predicates into relation with each 
other. I believe that our mental life begins with 
sensations — sensations which contain no hint, so 
to speak, of a self as experiencing them, because 
they are not elements of judgments, either im- 
plicit or explicit. Sometime in the course of the 
child's experience it begins to think its sensations, 
begins to use them as the subject or predicate of a 
judgment, and then thought begins. If you ask 
why it begins to think its sensations, I am obliged 
to say I do not know, and I do not think any one 
does. All that can be said about it in the present 
state of our knowledge — all that we shall ever be 
able to say about it — is that it is so. 

We have seen already that there are two kinds 
of judgments, affirmative or those that affirm the 
subject of the predicate, and negative or those 
that deny it. 



230 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

There are, also, two kinds of affirmative, and 
two kind of negative judgments. 

When we say, " All men are mortal, " " No 
men are perfect, " we are talking in each case 
about the whole class of men. But when we say, 
" Some men are proud. " "Some men are not 
rich," we are talking about only a part of the class ; 
The first kind of judgments called universal, or 
those in which the subject of the proposition is 
the whole class ; the second is particular, or those 
in which the subject is a part of the class. 

Judgments are due to different causes. Often 
you are undecided about a matter for a long time 
and only make up your mind, reach a judgment 
after a careful consideration of a great many facts. 
In such cases the judgment is plainly the result of 
a process of reasoning. Sometimes the judgment 
seems to be instantaneous, when it is likewise the 
result of a process of reasoning. All those cases 
of acquired perception, so called, are undoubtedly 
of that kind. Sometimes they are not the result 
of a process of reasoning at all, but are intuitive, 
as when we think "two straight lines cannot in- 
close a space. " 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 23I 

LIST OF QUESTIONS. 

i. What is an implicit judgment ? 

2. Give illustrations. 

3. Show that comparison, abstraction, and 
generalization involve implicit judgments. 

4. What is meant by unit of mental action ? 

5. State and explain the various kinds of 
judgments. 

6. What is an intuition ? 




232 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

LESSON XXVII. 

REASONING. 

E have seen that a judgment is that act of 
the mind which enables us to use propo- 
sitions intelligently, and that they are 
due to a variety of causes, among others, to pro- 
cesses of reasoning. When we say that such and 
such a man is a man of good judgment, we have 
in mind judgments due to processes of reasoning. 
By a man of good judgment, we mean a man whose 
decisions, judgments, are generally wise ; that is, 
in accordance with the facts. We go to such a 
man for advice ; we tell him what we wish to do, 
and all the circumstances in the case, and he con- 
siders them and says : " I'll tell you what I would 
do " — and then he goes on to tell us the decision, 
conclusion, judgment at which he has arrived. 
Sometimes he hesitates before giving any advice, 
saying: " I do not know what to think is best" — 
because he has formed no judgment. But when 
he forms a judgment, it is based on the facts we 
have told him. If he could give a correct descrip- 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 233 

tion of his mental processes, it would be in some 
such language as this : In view of this and that 
and the other fact, I think this is true, or that is 
best. 

Hence, I say that such judgments are due to 
processes of reasoning. For what is reasoning? 
It is that act of the mind by which zve go from the 
known to the unknoivn. 

I have told you already that besides mental 
facts, the facts of which we are directly conscious, 
I think there is another class of self-evident facts, 
intuitions, truths, in other words, which we know 
without any process of reasoning. But excepting 
these two, mental facts and intuitions, everything 
else which we know or believe, we believe because 
of processes of reasoning. All that a child learns 
from its mother it learns by a process of reason- 
ing. If his mental processes in such cases were 
fully set forth in words, we should have to use 
some such language as this: " What my mother 
tells me is true." " She says that that is a dog." 
" Therefore, it is a dog." 

I say if his mental processes were fully de- 
scribed, of course the child cannot do that. For 

just as there are implicit concepts, ideas of classes 
16 



234 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

of objects when we cannot state the qualities com- 
mon to the members of the class by means of 
which we actually recognize an object as belonging 
to it, and implicit judgments, acts of the mind in 
which subjects and predicates are brought into the 
relation of a judgment although we do not state 
the judgment in words, so there are acts of implicit 
reasoning, processes in which the mind passes from 
certain facts assumed as known called premises to 
certain things which it assumes to be facts called 
conclusions. 

It would seem that the mind ought to be con- 
scious of its own acts and that therefore we ought 
to know the facts which cause us to believe this or 
that, but in the majority of cases very few people 
do. If you doubt it, suppose you begin to exper- 
iment upon yourself; suppose you ask yourself 
why you believe this or that. Doubtless you can 
often tell, but unless I am mistaken, it will often 
happen that you cannot, because the processes of 
reasoning which lead you to believe it are im- 
plicit. 

I have already pointed out what I regard as 
the explanation of the fact that we often can not. 
I think the explanation is found in the circumstance 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 235 

that the mind is often unconscious of its own oper- 
ations. But whether you accept this explanation 
of the fact or not, the fact itself is indisputable. 

If you clearly realize the definition of reason- 
ing, you will see that you are reasoning every mo- 
ment of your life when you are awake. You awake 
in the morning and glance at the clock to see what 
time it is. You know that the object you are look- 
ing at is a clock by a process of reasoning. It 
looks thus and so, and therefore you say it is a 
clock. You say that it is half-past six, and there- 
fore you must get up. You infer that that is the 
correct time, because you have found your clock 
reliable in the past, and when the hands have been 
in the position they now are, you have learned 
that it was half-past six. You get up and begin to 
dress — every act which you perform is based on a 
process of reasoning. There was a time in your 
life when you could not do this or that simply by 
willing to do it. The child of two can not button 
its dress. And when he learns to do it once, he 
will be able to do it again by an act of reasoning. 
He will reason — implicitly, of course: I did thus 
and so yesterday morning when I buttoned my 
dress, and, therefore, as I wish to button it again, 



236 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

I will do the same thing again. You go out and 
sit down to breakfast. Why do you do it? You 
are reasoning again. You are hungry, and as eat- 
ing has satisfied your hunger in the past, you 
think it will do it again. You decline to drink 
coffee, because you drank it yesterday morning 
and had a headache, and you reason that the cof- 
fee was the cause. Some one comes into the room 

and you say, " Good morning, Mr. ," naming 

a friend of yours. How do you know who it is ? 
By an act of reasoning. Your friend looks thus 
so, and as this gentleman looks the same way, you 
conclude that he and your friend are the same per- 
son. Further than that, you know that he is a 
person — a living, conscious being like yourself — 
by an act of reasoning. He acts like a person, and 
therefore you think he is one. These examples 
will give you some idea of the part which reason- 
ing plays in our mental life. If you will think for 
a little, you will see that it is reasoning that gives 
memory its value. Why is it useful for us to know 
the past? As a guide to the future. Inasmuch as 
the past has been thus and so, we reason that the 
same will be true in the future ; and without reason 
we should have and could have no opinion what- 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 237 

ever of the future. You believe that the sun will 
rise in the morning simply because it has done so 
in the past. 

I have tried to give you a clear idea of all this 
because I want you to realize how important it is 
for you to train the reasoning powers of your 
pupils correctly. Nearly everything we believe, 
we believe as I have said because of processes of 
reasoning. But many of the things which we be- 
lieve are false because we have reasoned badly. 
Now since what we do depends to so great an ex- 
tent on what we believe, and what we believe on 
how we reason, it follows that the proper cultiva- 
tion of the reasoning powers is of the very highest 
importance. 

I think it is evident from what I have said 
that children begin to reason at a very early age. 
The first time a child recognizes an object it is 
done through an act of reasoning. For what is 
the recognition of an object? It is there-knowing 
of it. And how is that possible ? Because the 
object seen to-day looks exactly like the one seen 
yesterday — therefore the child thinks they are the 
same. Every step w 7 hich a child takes in learning 
a language, he takes by an act of reasoning. 



238 WESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

How, for instance, does the child learn the mean- 
ing of the pronoun I ? He hears his father and 
mother and brother and sister each saying I and 
each meaning a different person by it. Little by 
little he comes to see that each means himself and 
he comes to see this by a process of reasoning. 
And because the word is used in such different 
senses in the mouths of different persons, it is one 
of the last words in common use that he comes to 
understand. 

By a similar process he enlarges his knowledge 
of objects and their properties. At first he knows 
nothing whatever about them — not even, as I 
think, that they exist. He is as ready to put his 
hand into the fire as into water, but little by little 
he learns the familiar properties of the objects 
about him. He learns that when he puts his hand 
on a hot stove he gets burnt. And so he comes to 
think of hot things as causing pain, and by similar 
processes he comes to know the familiar properties 
of the various objects with which he comes in 
contact. 

In the same way he comes to know the causes 
of many of his experiences. A child will go out 
of doors on a cold day and cry because of the cold, 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 239 

and yet be anxious to stay out, because he does not 
know the cause of his pain. After a little he learns 
from his mother what the trouble is in such cases, 
and so, through reasoning again, reasoning that 
since his mother tells him so it is true, he comes to 
connect his experience with its cause. 



LIST OF QUESTIONS. 

What is an implicit concept? 

What is an implicit judgment? 

What is reasoning ? 

What is implicit reasoning ? 

What are mental facts ? 

What is an intuition ? 

Illustrate the extent to which we reason. 



240 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

LESSON XXVIII. 

REASONING. 




you will examine carefully any act of ex- 
plicit reasoning, you will see that it results 
from a comparison of judgments. Precise- 
ly as an explicit judgment results from a compari- 
son of concepts, or of a concept and a precept, or 
a concept and an image, so an act of explicit rea- 
soning results from a comparison of judgments. 
Take such an argument as the following : 

u All measures that tend to promote home 
production are beneficial ; A protective tariff does 
this ; Therefore, a protective tariff is beneficial. " 

Here plainly the last proposition — called the 
conclusion, results from a comparison of the judg- 
ments expressed in the first two — called the major 
and minor premises. We see that if all measures 
that tend to promote home production are benefi- 
cial, and that if a protective tariff does this, it 
must be beneficial. 

Take another : 

All the horses which I have seen have four 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 241 

legs ; The horses which I have seen are types or 
examples of all horses ; Therefore, all horses have 
four legs. 

Here again the conclusion results from a com- 
parison of the judgments expressed in the major 
and minor premises 

From this it follows that an act of reasoning 
may be entirely correct and still lead to a false 
conclusion. If one or both of the judgments from 
a comparison of which the conclusion results is 
false, then the conclusion may be false even though 
it follows from the premises. Take the first of the 
two above syllogisms — the three propositions 
which express an act of deductive reasoning, 
major premise, minor premise, and conclusion, are 
called a syllogism — as an example. A man may 
say, u Undoubtedly it is true that a protective tariff 
is beneficial provided it is true that ail measures 
that tend to promote home productions are benefi- 
cial, but I deny that. I hold that what promotes 
the interests of individuals promotes the interests 
of nations ; and inasmuch as free trade promotes 
the interests of individuals, therefore it promotes 
the interests of nations/' Here we have an argu- 
ment which leads us to a conclusion directly the 



242 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

reverse of the first. If we state it in syllogistic 
form I think we shall see that the reasoning is 
quite as correct as the first. This is the syllogisms 

Whatever promotes the interests of individ- 
uals promotes the interests of nations. Free trade 
promotes the interests of individuals j therefore, it 
promotes the interests of nations. 

Here, you see, are two acts of reasoning, both 
of them entirely correct, and yet leading to contra- 
dictory conclusions. The reason, of course, is that 
the two acts of reasoning are based on different 
premises — judgments. And here you have an 
illustration of one of the reasons why arguments 
avail so little to convince men. Inasmuch as all 
reasoning is a comparing of judgments and a con- 
cluding that something is true in consequence, if I, 
holding one pair of judgments to be true, compare 
them, and you a different pair and compare them, 
in the nature of the case we shall reach different 
conclusions. Indeed, only in so far as we agree 
upon something as true is it possible for us to argue 
with each other intelligently at all. Take the two 
syllogisms about protective tariff and free trade 
which we have been considering, and let us say that 
A holds the first one to be true and B the second. 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 243 

Before A can convince B, he must first show him 
that the major-premise, " whatever promotes the 
interests of individuals promotes the interests of 
nations," is false, and then that his own major- 
premise, " All measures that promote home pro- 
duction are beneficial" is true. Until he can do 
that it is absurd for him to attempt to convince 
B that a protective tariff is beneficial. On the 
other hand, before B can convince A he must first 
show him that the major-premise, "All measures 
that tend to promote home production are bene- 
ficial," is false, and then that his own major-pre- 
mise, " whatever promotes the interests of indi- 
viduals promotes the interests of nations," is true. 
If you will examine the arguments of able 
men on some subject in reference to which they 
differ with each other, you will find that they differ 
not so much because one — or both — of them rea- 
sons incorrectly, as because they base their reason- 
ings on different premises. In the January num- 
ber of the North American Review, for example, 
there are two articles — one written by Congress- 
man Reed, now Speaker of the House of Repre- 
sentatives, and defending the rules just adopted by 
the Republican majority, and the other written 



244 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

by Senator Carlisle, ex-Speaker of the House, 
and severely criticizing the same rules. Both ar- 
guments are entirely sound, but as they are based 
on different premises, they lead to contradictory 
conclusions. Congressman Reed reasons substan- 
tially as follows : Whatever rules are necessary to 
enable the House to transact business are wise ; 
the rules reported by the Republicans are neces- 
sary to enable the House to transact business. 
Therefore they are wise. Senator Carlisle, on 
the other hand, reasons substantially as follows: 
Whatever rules enable the Speaker of the House 
to exercise arbitrary and tyrannical power are un- 
wise. The rules just adopted by the House enable 
the Speaker to exercise arbitrary and tyrannical 
power ; therefore they are unwise. If you ask 
how it comes that able men start from different 
premises since they do not, as a rule, reason incor- 
rectly, you ask a very difficult question. I think, 
however, as I have already said, that the answer 
is partly found in the interdependence of knowing, 
feeling and willing. Men differ in their feelings, 
and hence they differ in the premises from which 
they start. In the particular case, for example, 
every Republican in the House voted in favor of 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 245 

the Republican rules and every Democrat against 
them. A few of them, perhaps, voted dishonestly, 
but I have no doubt that the very great majority 
voted honestly. How did it come to pass that the 
Republicans all believed one way — all started from 
one major-premise, and the Democrats irom an- 
other? Simply because of a difference in their 
interests — feelings. The Republicans were inter- 
ested in having their rules adopted, and the Dem- 
ocrats were interested in having them rejected, 
and inasmuch as what men believe depends on 
what they attend to, and as what they attend to 
depends on what they are interested in attending 
to, their interests exert a very powerful influence 
on their beliefs. 

Almost every page of history furnishes illus- 
trations of this truth. 

Every one who has studied the history of Cal- 
houn knows that a great change began to take 
place in his opinions about the year 1825. Before 
that time he had been an advocate of a protective 
tariff, a national bank, internal improvements, a 
liberal interpretation of the Constitution. About 
1825, his opinions on all these questions began to 
undergo a change, and in a few years he had com- 



246 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

pletely wheeled about. The explanation is, that 
about this time he began to see that slavery was 
the controlling interest of the South, and that the 
only constitutional weapon with which it could be 
defended was the doctrine of State rights. 

Andrew Jackson's history abounds in illustra- 
tions of the influence of men's feelings in determ- 
ining the major-premises upon which they base 
their reasoning. No man could be a friend of An- 
drew Jackson and disagree with him. He was not 
only a very sincere patriot, but he was sure he was 
right, and, therefore, that everybody who disa- 
greed with him was wrong. What seemed true to 
him seemed so self-evident that he could not un- 
derstand how a man could honestly and honorably 
differ with him. 

The study of the history of men like Alexan- 
der Hamilton and Jefferson will give still different 
illustrations of this truth. Because of natural dif- 
ferences between the things they liked, these men 
inclined to start from different premises in their 
political reasoning. Jefferson naturally trusted 
the people and believed in their political capacity. 
Hamilton as naturally distrusted them, and with 
his strong love of order and stability, it was as 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 247 

natural for him to believe in a strong government 
— one strong enough to hold the people in check, 
as it was for Jefferson to believe in a weak one, be- 
cause he did not think the people needed much 
governmental restraint. 

LIST OF QUESTIONS. 

i. State and illustrate what reasoning is. 

2. What is a syllogism ? 

3. What is a major-premise? A minor 
premise? 

4. Show that good reasoning may lead to 
a false conclusion. 

5. State and illustrate why men start from 
different premises. 




248 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

LESSON XXIX. 

REASONING. 

the last lesson, 1 endeavored to show that 
all reasoning consists in comparing judg- 
ments and concluding that something is 
true in consequence. I pointed out the fact that 
an act of reasoning may be entirely correct and 
lead to a false conclusion, because one or both of 
the judgments on which it is based is false. And 
hence it happens, as I endeavored to show, that 
men differ with each other quite as often be- 
cause they start from different premises as be- 
cause they reach different conclusions from the 
same premises. 

From this point of view, I think it is clear 
that there are two things to be done in the train- 
ing of the reasoning powers of our pupils: (1), to 
train them to reason correctly from given prem- 
ises; and (2), to give them such training as will 
diminish, as much as possible, the influence of 
personal considerations in selecting the premises 
upon which they base their reasoning. 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 249 

If you will read the last lesson carefully, I 
think you will see what I mean by " the influence 
of personal considerations," I endeavored to show 
that one great reason why men differ to such an 
extent in the premises from which they start, is 
because of the influence of their feelings. In a 
word, men believe what they want to believe. 
And why? Because they give their attention only 
to those facts which favor what they want to be- 
lieve, shutting their eyes, more or less consciously, 
so far as all others are concerned. How to dimin- 
ish that tendency is certainly one of the most diffi- 
cult, as it is one of the most important, problems 
of education. How important it is, you will begin 
to realize when you remember that all of our 
rational conduct, I mean everything we do that is 
not due to mere impulse, is based on what we be- 
lieve. What we want to believe has a great influ- 
ence on what we do believe, but it has no influence 
whatever in determining what is true. 

Calhoun and the South wanted to believe that 

slavery was right, and they did, but that did not 

make it right. In order to defend slavery they 

wanted to believe that the doctrine of State's 

Rights was true, and they did, but that did not 
17 



250 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

make it true, and their attempt to put it in prac- 
tice resulted in one of the most fearful civil wars 
of which history gives us any account. But all 
that can be done it seems to me, in the way of di- 
minishing the influence of personal considerations 
in determining premises, is, in the first place, to 
point out the great danger of such influences. I 
have given you examples of such influences from 
history ; you need not go to history to find them 
in abundance. Incidents at school, if you are on 
the lookout for them, will give you ample oppor- 
tunity to bring home to your pupils the fact that 
there is great danger that they will be led to be- 
lieve this or that, not because a candid survey of 
all the facts shows that it is most probable, but be- 
cause they wish to believe it. In the second place, 
you can set them a good example. I do not know 
how United States History can be taught profitably 
except by constant reference to current events. 
Mr. Freeman well says that " History is past Pol- 
itics and Politics present History ;" and the 
teacher of United States History should constantly 
try to illustrate "past Politics " by " present Poli- 
tics," and show how " present Politics " are the 
necessary results of the Politics of the past. But to 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 251 

do this profitably, to do it without exciting the 
prejudices of his pupils, he must make it very evi- 
dent that in all the questions he discusses his su- 
preme desire is to get at the truth. And he must 
really have that desire. In these and all other 
questions he should not only allow but encourage 
the utmost freedom of discussion. And when his 
pupils have pointed out an error in his reasonings 
— which they are sure to do sometimes — he should 
acknowledge it instantly, and thus show his su- 
preme deference to truth. 

I defined reasoning as that act of the mind by 
which we go from the known to the unknown, 
and I said that it consisted in a comparison of 
judgments and a concluding that something is 
true in consequence. Inasmuch as we compare 
different kinds of judgments in our processes of 
reasoning, logicians are in the habit of saying that 
there are three kinds of reasoning : deductive, 
inductive, and reasoning by analogy. 

Deductive reasoning is that kind of reasoning 
in which we reason from general propositions to 
particular propositions, or to those that are less 
general than the major premise. 

In the following syllogism, All men are mortal ; 



252 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

some animals are men ; therefore, some animals 
are mortal, the conclusion, some animals are mor- 
tal, is a particular proposition, because the subject 
is a part of the class animals. But in this syllo- 
gism, All men are mortals, Americans are men, 
therefore, Americans are mortal, the conclusion, 
Americans are mortal, is a general proposition 
although it is less general than the major premise 
because the class men is much wider than the 
class Americans since a great many individuals 
are men besides Americans. 

In order to point out some very common 
errors in deductive reasoning, it is necessary to 
define the various parts of which a syllogism is 
composed. I have said that a syllogism consists 
of the three propositions which give complete 
expression to an act of reasoning, and that the 
three propositions which constitute it are called 
major premise, minor premise and conclusion. 
You can always determine which is the conclusion 
because it expresses that which is believed in con- 
sequence of something else which is assumed to be 
true, but how can you determine which of the two 
premises is major and which minor? Not by the 
order in which they are stated, because that makes 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 253 

no. difference. I may say, All men are mortal; 
Americans are men, etc., or, Americans are men, 
All men are mortal and in either case the con- 
clusion will be that all iVmericans are mortal. 

If you examine this syllogism you will see 
that although there are in all three subjects and 
three predicates, six of both — there are but three 
different ones in the three propositions because 
each of them occurs twice. The subject, men, in 
the proposition, All men are mortal, is the predi- 
cate in the other proposition, All Americans are 
men, and the subject of that proposition, Ameri- 
cans, is the subject of the conclusion, All Ameri- 
cans are mortal. Again, also the predicate of the 
proposition, All men are mortal, is the predicate of 
the conclusion, All Americans are mortal. All 
good syllogisms have three terms, and w T ith some 
exceptions which I will not enter into, but three, 
and these are called major, minor and middle. 
The major term is the predicate of the conclusion, 
the minor the subject, and the middle that term 
which is not found in the conclusion at all. In the 
syllogism we have been considering for example, 
" mortal V is the major term, because it is the pred- 
icate of the conclusion, and " Americans " is the 



254 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

minor term, because it is the subject of the 
conclusion. Men being the term which is 
not found in the conclusion at all, is the 
middle term. When we know the major and 
minor terms of a syllogism it is easy to determine 
which is the major and which the minor premise. 
Both of these premises contain the middle term 
and the one which contains the middle term and 
the major term is the major premise, and the one 
which contains the middle term and the minor 
term is the minor premise. Thus, in the above 
syllogism, since " mortal " is the major term, the 
proposition, "All men are mortal" is the major 
premise, since it contains the middle term, " men" 
and the major term ; and the proposition, Ameri- 
cans aretoen is the minor premise, since it contains 
the minor term Americans, and the middle term. 
Summing up, we may say that a syllogism has 
three propositions, and but three — the major prem- 
ise, the minor premise, and the conclusion ; and 
three terms, and but three — the major, minor, and 
middle ; that the major term is the predicate, and 
the minor the subject of the conclusion, and the 
middle term is not contained in the conclusion at 
all ; that the major premise is that premise which 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 255 

contains the major and middle terms, and the 
minor that one which contains the minor and 
middle terms. 

LIST OF QUESTIONS. 

i. What are the two things to be done in the 
training of the reasoning powers ? 

2. Illustrate the importance of the second. 

3. What can a teacher do in the way of giving 
his pupils the training they need in that particular? 

4. State the three kinds of reasoning, and de- 
fine and illustrate the first. 

5. What is the conclusion of a syllogism ? 

6. Give examples. 

7. How can you tell which are the major and 
the minor premises of a syllogism ? 

8. Give examples. 



256 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

LESSON XXX. 

REASONING CONTINUED. 



Tvl^A^ 



g £^I/THOUGH propositions seem to make but 
f ^^M one assertion, or rather to be the expres- 
sion of but one assertion, they really ex- 
press two; one about the subject and one about the 
predicate. When I say, for example, that all men 
are mortal, I make an assertion not only about men 
but about mortal beings. I assert that all men are 
mortal, and that some mortal beings are men. 
When I say that some boys are studious, I not only 
make an assertion about some boys but about some 
studious persons, for I say that some studious per- 
sons are boys as well as that some boys are studious 
persons. 

It is necessary to understand this clearly in 
order to be able to apply some rules of great im- 
portance in deductive reasoning. No syllogism is 
valid whose middle term is not distributed at least 
once, and no term must be distributed in the con- 
clusion w T hicb has not been distributed in the prem- 
ises. A term has been distributed when the asser- 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 257 

Hon {or dental) 2s made of the entire class of which 
it is the name. In the proposition, all men are 
mortal, mortality is asserted of all men, conse- 
quently, " men " is distributed, but since it is only 
asserted that some mortal " beings are men the 
predicate" mortal is not distributed. Inasmuch 
as this proposition illustrates all universal affirma- 
tive propositions in this respect, we have this gen- 
eral result : universal affirmatives distribute the 
subject, but not the predicate. 

If we examine a particular affirmative propo- 
sition as, some boys are studious, we see at once 
that the assertion is made of only a part of the class 
boys and a part of the class studious persons. As 
we assert that some boys are studious, and that some 
studious persons are boys, we reach this general 
result — for this proposition illustrates all particu- 
lar propositions — particular propositions do not 
distribute either their subject or predicate. 

Let us examine a universal negative, for ex*- 
ample, No dogs can talk. It is evident that in 
this proposition we deny not only that any dogs 
can talk, but that any talking creatures or crea- 
tures capable of talking, are dogs. In other words, 
the denial is made of the whole of the subject and 



258 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

of the whole of the predicate or rather of the class 
denoted by the subject and predicate. Hence we 
see that universal negatives distribute both their 
subject and their predicate. 

The particular negative is a little more diffi- 
cult to analyze. If we examine the proposition: 
Some boys are not studious, it may seem at first 
sight that what it expresses is that some boys are 
not studious and that no studious beings are boys, 
but it evidently does not assert the latter, for the 
proposition is true but this latter statement is not. 
If we state the proposition in the form of an equa- 
tion : Some boys equal some persons who are not 
studious, we see at once that it is not asserted that 
no persons who are studious are boys, but merely 
that some of them are not. But in order to see ex- 
actly what are the two assertions expressed by that 
proposition, we can state the equation in this form : 
Some boys equal no studious persons ; in other 
words, we state that some boys are not any studi- 
ous persons, and that no studious persons are some 
boys. Hence, we have as a general result that the 
particular negative does not distribute its subject, 
but does distribute the predicate. 

Summing up, the universal affirmative distrib- 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 259 

utes its subject, but not its predicate ; the particu- 
lar affirmative distributes neither its subject nor its 
predicate ; the universal negative distributes both 
its subject and its predicate ; the particular nega- 
tive distributes its predicate, but not its subject. 

If this is clear, I think you can see the reason 
for the statement that no syllogism is valid which 
distributes any term in the conclusion which was 
not distributed in the premises. In deductive 
reasoning, the conclusion is based upon, or drawn 
from, the premises. In other words, our reason 
for believing any conclusion so far as we believe it 
through deductive reasoning, is that it must be 
true if certain premises which we believe are true. 
If, for example, all As are Bs, and all Bs are Cs, 
then it must be true that all As are Cs. The truth 
of this may be made evident by the following equa- 
tions : All As equal some Bs ; All Bs equal some 
Cs, and inasmuch as all Bs equal some Cs it fol- 
lows thac some Bs equal some Cs. We have then 
the two equations, All As equal some Bs, and 
some Bs equal some Cs, and since things which are 
equal to each other it follows that, All As equal 
some Cs. But the syllogism, all As are Cs ; all 
Cs are Bs ; therefore, all Bs are As, is not valid 



26o LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

because it distributes B in the conclusion while it 
is not distributed in the premises. The following 
equations will make that clear : All As equal some 
Cs. All Cs equal some Bs. If all Cs equal some 
Bs, it follows that some Cs equal some Bs, and as 
things which are equal to the same thing are equal 
to each other it follows that all As equal some Bs 
or some Bs equal all As. But it is plain that we 
only are warranted in saying that some Bs equal 
all As, while according to the conclusion of the 
syllogism all Bs equal some As. Hence the syllo- 
gism is incorrect. 

In every good syllogism, also, the middle term 
must be distributed at least once. In the following 
syllogism, All students are human beings ; all 
Americans are human beings ; therefore, all Amer- 
icans are students, the middle term, human beings, 
is not distributed, and hence, the conclusion is in- 
correct. We might, indeed, say with truth that 
some Americans are students, but we cannot infer 
it from the premises. Precisely as good reasoning 
may lead us to false conclusions because the 
premises are false, so poor reasoning may lead us 
to a true conclusion. And that this reasoning is 
poor, I think the following considerations will help 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 261 

you to see : Suppose we represent human beings 
by a large circle, and Americans and students by 
two small circles inscribed within. Do these cir- 
cles overlap, or are they entirely separate from each 
other? The premises do not permit us to say. 
All that they warrant us in saying is that the circle 
which represents Americans must be inscribed 
within the circle that represents human beings, 
and that the same is true of the circle which rep- 
resents students. 

We have seen already that a good syllogism 
can have but one middle term. When a middle 
term means one thing in one premise and another 
in the other it is called ambiguous, and that, evi- 
dently, amounts to the same thing as two middle 
terms. If any one argues that u all metals are ele- 
ments ; brass is metal ; therefore, it is an element, " 
he reasons incorrectly, because the middle term, 
metal, is used ambiguously. In the major premise 
it is used in the sense in which chemists use it ; in 
the other to denote a mixture of metals, in the 
sense in which it is used in the arts. 

No conclusion can be drawn from particular 
premises. If I say some men are good, some men 



262 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

are bad, that does not, of course, give me a right 
to say that some good beings are bad. 

Also, from two negative premises, nothing can 
be inferred. If I argue that some Americans are 
not Europeans, and Virginians are not Europeans, 
therefore Virginians are not Americans, I reason 
incorrectly. It is true that things which are equal 
to the same thing, are equal to each other ; but it 
by no means follows that things which are unequal 
to the same thing are unequal to each other. 

LIST OF QUESTIONS. 

i. Show that every proposition really makes 
two assertions. 

2. State and illustrate what is meant by the 
distribution of a term. 

3. What terms does the universal affirmative 
distribute? 

4. What the particular affirmative ? 

5. What the universal negative? 

6. What the particular negative ? 

7. Give illustrations of each. 

8. Show that any syllogism which distributes 
any term in the conclusion, which is not distrib- 
uted in the premises, is invalid. 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 263 

9. Show that the middle term must be dis- 
tributed at least once. 

10. What is meant by ambiguity of the mid- 
dle term ? 

11. State the following arguments in the form 
of a syllogism ; point out the major, minor, and 
middle terms, and state whether they are distrib- 
uted or not. 

Bacon was a great lawyer and statesman ; 
and as he was also a philosopher, we may infer 
that any philosopher may be a great lawyer and 
statesman. 

Mathematical study undoubtedly improves the 
reasoning powers ; but, as the study of logic is not 
mathematical study, we may infer that it does not 
improve the reasoning powers. * 

1:. Are they valid ; and if not, why not? 

"These arguments are taken from Jevon's Logic. 




264 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

LESSON XXXI. 

REASONING CONTINUED. 

E have seen that all reasoning consists in a 
comparing of judgments and a concluding 
that something is true in consequence, 
that when one of the judgments — expressed in a 
proposition called the major premise — is general, 
and the conclusion is drawn because it is seen to 
be included in the general assertion, the reasoning 
is called deductive ; but that when the judgments 
compared are assertions about individual or par- 
ticular facts, and the conclusion is a judgment 
about an entire class of facts, the reasoning is in- 
ductive. 

I have called your attention a number of times 
to the fact that there are probably general proposi- 
tions, which the mind believes, which it does not 
derive from any process of reasoning. I do not 
believe, as I have already said, that we learn by 
reasoning that a straight line is the shortest dis- 
tance between two points, or that if equals are 
added to equals their sums will be equal. I regard 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 265 

these as truths which the mind comes to know in- 
dependently of any process of reasoning, self-evi- 
dent truths — things which it sees to be true. 
These and similar propositions, of course, form the 
basis of all mathematical reasoning ; and in these 
subjects, consequently, deductive reasoning is not 
based upon general propositions which have been 
reached by previous inductions. 

But outside of the various branches of mathe- 
matics, I believe that all deductive reasoning is 
based upon premises which have been reached by 
previous inductions. You believe that any unsup- 
ported body will tend to fall to the ground. Why? 
Because you believe that all unsupported bodies 
will, and you believe that because you have seen a 
great many bodies fall when they were unsup- 
ported ; in other words, it is an induction. You 
believe, likewise, that any particular man you 
know will die sometime, because you believe that 
all men will die, and you believe that because of 
the individual men you have known to die. 

Sully very properly calls attention to the fact 
that induction very closely resembles the process 
of generalization which I described a few lessons 
back. Generalization, you will remember, is the 

18 



266 LESSONS Ii\ T PSYCHOLOGY 

last of the three processes involved in the forma- 
tion of a concept. A child directs his attention to 
two or more objects at the same time — compari- 
son — and after noting their like and unlike qual- 
ities fixes his attention upon the former exclusive- 
ly — abstraction —and thinks of them as the char- 
acteristics of a class — generalization. But there 
is no going from the known to the unknown, and, 
consequently, no reasoning in the act of generali- 
zation. When a child, noting that two or more 
objects resembling each other in a number of par- 
ticulars, and all used to sit in, thinks of the qual- 
ities in which they resemble each other as the 
characteristics of a class — thinks, in other words, 
,pf gjl objects possessing these qualities as members 
,of the glass, chairs, he does not make an inference 
ffbQUt the objects he does not see. He does not 
say that iittce these chairs have this and that 
and the other quality, therefore all chairs have 
them —that would be an induction. But he says 
that since these objects are alike in certain respect 
I will make a class of them, and if there are any 
other objects which possess the same qualities I 
will put them in the same class. 

Of course you will not suppose that I mean 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 267 

that a child definitely thinks any such thoughts as 
I have explicitly stated. I have tried to make 
quite clear the great difference between what the 
mind really does and what it is definitely and dis- 
tinctly conscious of doing. And when a child sees 
two objects and calls them dogs — thus putting 
them in the same class — and when seeing another 
dog, says, u dog" — putting it in the same class — 
it is plain that his mind has followed substantially 
the track which I have endeavored to describe 
above. This, I say, is generalization. But I think 
you see the wide difference between generalization 
— making a class of objects — and induction — 
concluding that since one or more members of a 
class have such and such characteristics, that there- 
fore they all have it ; or that since something is true 
of one or more members of a class, therefore it will 
be true of all — induction. In the one case, we are 
merely arranging objects into classes and not rea- 
soning at all ; in the other, we reason from one 
or more members of the class to the entire 
class. 

If this is clear, I think it will be evident that 
induction presupposes generalization. If in induc- 
tion I reason from one or more members of a class 



268 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

to the whole class, I must have the idea of the class 
already formed in my mind. 

But reasoning, in turn, makes all but the 
simplest generalizations possible. I will illustrate. 
A child sees a round, yellow object, takes hold of 
it, eats it, and in this way learns the kind of sensa- 
tions it produces through his various senses. He 
hears his mother call it an orange. The next day 
he simply sees an orange — does not feel it or taste 
it — and says " orange. " What does he mean by 
that ? He means, if he uses the word intelligently, 
that the object would feel thus and so, if he could 
get hold of it, and taste in such and such a way ; in 
other words, he is reasoning. Inasmuch as the ob- 
ject which had such and such a color yesterday had 
such and such other qualities, therefore, this ob- 
ject, which has a similar color will have similar 
qualities. Hence, as I think you see, there is an 
element of reasoning in all cases of what we call 
perceiving. All perceiving is a process of project- 
ing certain sensations actually experienced, and 
certain others which are merely imagined, into the 
external world, and regarding them as qualities of 
the external world, and the imagined sensations are 
grouped with those actually experienced, because 
of processes of reasoning. 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 269 

And this enables us to see from another point 
of view not only how important is the part which 
reasoning plays in our mental life but at how early 
an age children begin to reason. When a child 
begins its life in the world its mental existence is 
simple sentiency — as I think — in other words, it 
merely has feelings. In the course of a short time, 
it begins to form judgments about its sensations ; 
it begins to think. When thought begins, knowl- 
edge begins. Little by little, he begins to group his 
way out from the darkness of absolute ignorance 
and learns to know a few of the objects and per- 
sons which surround him. He learns to know his 
mother and nurse and a few of the objects which 
have an intimate relation to his pleasures and 
pains. But this advance in knowledge, every step 
of it, is gained through reasoning. And I will 
digress here, to remark that if you will notice the 
kind of things which the child first learns and how 
he comes to learn them, you will get another illus- 
tration of the interdependence of knowing, feeling 
and willing. It is the character of his interests 
that determines the character of his knowledge. 
He knows one thing and is ignorant of another, 
because one of them has appealed to the emotional 



270 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

side of his nature — has aroused his interest — and 
the other has not. Here, as everywhere, the law 
is illustrated, no knowledge without attention, and 
no prolonged attention, in the case of children 
none at all, without interest. 

LIST OF QUESTIONS. 

1. Define intuition and give examples. 

2. Define and illustrate induction. 

3. State and illustrate the difference between 
induction and generalization. 

4. Show that induction presupposes general- 
ization and induction generalization. 

5. What is perception ? 

6. What kind of facts does the child first 
learn and why? 




LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 27 1 

LESSON XXXII. 

REASONING CONCLUDED. 

J[F you carefully compare inductive and de- 
ductive reasoning, you will see that they 
differ in a matter of fundamental impor- 
tance. In deductive reasoning, if the premises 
are true and the reasoning is correct, we may be 
absolutely certain of the conclusion. But this is 
not true of inductive reasoning. In inductive 
reasoning we may reason from true premises to 
a false conclusion by a method which it would be 
difficult to show to be incorrect. The reason of 
this is that there are two assumptions, one or the 
other of which underlies nearly or quite all of our 
inductions, which are both of them incapable of 
absolute proof. When, because I have seen a 
great variety of unsupported bodies fall to the 
ground, I reason that all unsupported bodies will, 
it is because I assume that these ttnsupported bodies 
are a type of all unsupported bodies. 

When I reason that all crows are black be- 
cause all the crows I have seen were blacky I 



272 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

make the same assumption — -that the crows I 
have seen are types or examples of the entire 
class. This assumption clearly underlies a large 
part of our inductions, and we never can be quite 
sure in any case that we have a right to make it. 
Of course it is more likely to be true when the 
instances which we assume to represent the entire 
class are very numerous. But no matter how 
many cases we have examined, it will always be 
true that some member of the class which we 
have not seen may be unlike those we have seen. 
An hypothesis is an assumption which we 
make to account for facts. Our minds are of such 
a nature that we feel a certain uneasiness when 
we know a fact which we cannot explain, and 
therefore it is natural for us to try to make some 
hypothesis or supposition to account for any fact 
we know. And since, of course, we do not make 
improbable suppositions to account for facts, or 
rather since we do not make suppositions which 
seem to us improbable, we are inclined to regard 
them as true so long as they explain the facts. 
And this is the other assumption upon which, as 
I have said, the greater part, if not all, of our 
inductions are based. 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 273 

This assumption cannot be so definitely stated 
as the preceding one. It would not be correct to 
state it in this form: An hypothesis which ex- 
plains facts is true. For one great reason why 
people differ from each other so widely in their 
opinions is that of two hypotheses which equally 
well explain the facts, one seems true to one, and 
the other to another. A dozen men on a jury 
listen to the same evidence and part of them base 
one conclusion upon it and the rest of them 
another. This is only another way of saying that 
one hypothesis which explains the facts seems 
probable to a part of them, and another to the rest 
of them. I do not believe that a more definite 
account of this assumption can be given than the 
following : We are naturally disposed to believe 
any hypothesis which does not seem improbable 
in itself, and which explains facts for which we 
have, apart from it, no explanation. 

The question as to why different suppositions 
seem probable to different minds, is a very diffi- 
cult one, too difficult to make it proper to discuss 
it in these lessons. I will only remark that it is one 
of the chief causes of the differences of opinion 
among men. I called your attention some time 



274 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

ago to the fact that one great reason for the differ- 
ences of opinion among men is that they base 
their reasonings on different major premises. We 
see now, I hope, that these different major prem- 
ises are different hypotheses, all of which seem to 
explain the facts which they are invented to ex-' 
plain, but one set of which seem to one party prob- 
able and another to another. 

Since we cannot rid our inductions of an ele- 
ment of uncertainty no matter how cautiously and 
carefully we frame them, I think it is evident that 
unless we make them as cautiously and as carefully 
as we can they are likely to have very little value. 
"I do not like Jews" says one. Get him to tell 
you why and you will find that the reason is that 
he has known two or three Jews who were not 
pleasant persons. " It does not do boys any good to 
go to college. John Jones went to college and he 
does not know any more than Will Smith does"— 
as though an examination of the case of John 
Jones entitled one to an opinion of the whole class 
of students that attend college. These are the 
kind of inductions you see people making every 
day of their lives, and I hope I need not say that 
they are inductions which they have no right 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 275 

whatever to make. The best thing you can do to 
guard your pupils against that sort of thing is so 
constantly to call their attention to the necessity 
of founding their inductions upon a wide basis of 
facts, that they may get a realization of the danger 
of doing anything else. 

Of course the first condition of doing this suc- 
cessfully is that you have a vivid appreciation of 
the dangers of such inductions yourself. And if 
you have such an appreciation, by encouraging 
them to express their opinions upon the various 
matters that come up, you can do something to 
develop such an appreciation in them. And when 
you are trying to develop such an appreciation, first 
of all in your own mind and then in the minds of 
your pupils, remember that the greatest foe of 
progress is Ignorance, and that the strongest friends 
of Ignorance are the Dogmatism and Prejudice to 
which careless and slovenly reasoning naturally 
give birth. 

I have said that reasoning is a comparison of 
judgments and a concluding that something is true 
in consequence ; that in deductive reasoning one 
of the judgments compared is expressed in a gen- 
eral proposition called the major premise, and in 



276 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

inductive reasoning, the judgments compared are 
particulars, each of which asserts or denies the 
same fact of members of the same class. Besides 
these two, we have seen that there is a third kind 
of reasoning — by analogy; and it only remains to 
see what that is, to bring this discussion of reason- 
ing to a conclusion. 

Argument from analogy is defined by Jevons as 
" direct inductive inference from one fact to any 
similar fact." The same author gives the follow- 
ing example: "Thus the planet Mars possesses an 
atmosphere, with clouds and mist closely resem- 
bling our own; it has seas, distinguished from the 
land by a greenish color, and polar regions cov- 
ered with snow. The red color of the planet 
seems to be due to the atmosphere, like the red 
color of our sunrises and sunsets. So much is 
similar in the surface of Mars and the surface of 
the earth, that we readily argue there must be in- 
habitants there as here. All that we can certainly 
say, however, is that if the circumstances be really 
similar, and similar germs of life have been created 
there as here,* there must be inhabitants. The 
fact that manv circumstances are similar, increases 

•'•' Italics are mine. 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 277 

the probability. But between the earth and the 
snn, the analogy is of a much fainter character. 
We speak, indeed, of the sun's atmosphere being 
subject to storms and filled with clouds, but these 
clouds are heated probably beyond the tempera- 
ture of our hottest furnaces; if they produce rain, 
it must resemble melted iron; and the sun-spots 
are perturbations of so tremendous a size and 
character, that the earth, together with half a 
dozen of the other planets, could readily be swal- 
lowed up in one of them. It is plain, then, that 
there is little or no analogy between the sun and 
the earth, and we can therefore with difficulty 
form a conception of anything going on in a sun 



or a star." 



This kind of reasoning seems to me much 
more uncertain even than inductive reasoning. 
Jevons speaks of the similarity between so many 
circumstances in the case of Mars and the earth as 
increasing the probability that the former is inhab- 
ited because the latter is, and at the same time says 
that " all we can certainly say is, that if the cir- 
cumstances be really similar, and similar germs of 
life have been created there as here, there must be 
inhabitants." Need I say that in the very nature 



278 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

of the case we neither know nor can know any- 
thing about the latter point, and that our knowl- 
edge of the former is so limited that any talk of 
probability is absolutely without foundation? All 
that the facts warrant us in saying is that for aught 
we know Mars may be inhabited, but he who claims 
to be able to say that it probably is, lays claim to a 
larger amount of knowledge than, in my opinion, 
falls to the lot of mortals. 

LIST OF QUESTIONS. 

i. State and illustrate a fundamental differ- 
ence between deductive and inductive reasoning. 

2. State and illustrate the two assumptions 
upon which inductive reasoning is based. 

3. What can we do in the way of training our 
pupils to form habits of careful and cautious reas- 
oning ? 

4. What is reasoning by analogy ? 

5. Illustrate it. 

6. Show that it is even more uncertain than 
inductive reasoning. 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 279 

LESSON XXXIII. 

THE PRIMARY INTELLECTUAL FUNCTIONS. 




N one of the earlier lessons we saw that 
there are three classes of mental facts, 
knowing, feeling and willing, and that the 
mind as possessing and exercising the power to 
know is called intellect. Since then, we have 
been occupied for the most part with this side of 
mental activity, having studied sensation, percep- 
tion, memory, imagination, conception, judgment 
and reasoning. 

I wish in this lesson to state and illustrate 
the fact that in all these various modes of intel- 
lectual activity the mind is really doing but two 
things ; discriminating or noting differences, and 
assimilating or noting resemblances. 

What is it to know a sensation ? It is to dis- 
criminate, or mentally separate it from all other 
sensations. A child has many sensations which it 
does not know ; many sensations, in other words, 
which it confuses with other sensations. But a 
sensation confused with other sensations is a 



28o LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

sensation put in the wrong class, precisely as if 
one were picking out a lot of ribbons of different 
colors, the confusing of purple with blue would 
lead to the mixing of these two kinds of ribbons. 
So likewise in perception. The first act of 
the mind in perceiving is to separate mentally the 
thing perceived from everything else. You will 
remember that in the lessons on Attention, I 
pointed out the fact that what we perceive de- 
pends upon what we attend to. The mind in 
attention simply singles out the thing attended to 
from everything else, and that is discrimination. 
A dog may stand before you, but if through pre- 
occupation or from any other cause you do not 
discriminate it from the objects about it, you do 
not know it. But discrimination is not all that is 
essential to knowledge. As a matter of fact, when 
we discriminate we usually know because assimi- 
lation or the act of putting a thing discriminated 
into a class usually follows so closely upon the 
act of discrimination tha,t the two may seem to 
you to be identical. But they are not. To pick 
a piece of blue ribbon out of a scrap bag is one 
thing ; to put it in a box with other blue ribbons 
is an entirely different thing. A child seeing a 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 28 1 

dog, may discriminate it from all other objects, 
but until he perceives its resemblance to some- 
thing else, until he assimilates it, he does not 
know it. 

So likewise with memory. What is it to have 
a perfect recollection of any event? It is to have 
an entirely definite knowledge both of the event 
and of the time when it happened. If the event 
is indistinct, it is not perfectly remembered, and 
its indistinctness is due to imperfect discrimina- 
tion and assimilation. If we are in any doubt as 
to the time it is because we do not perfectly dis- 
criminate it from other times, and do not perfectly 
assimilate it to other times. The event happened, 
say, at eleven o'clock yesterday, but I am uncer- 
tain whether it was eleven or twelve, or whether 
it happened yesterday or the day before ; that is, I 
do not discriminate the hour and the day when it 
happened from all others. 

Possibly you think that in this latter case 

there is no assimilation. Inasmuch as in anyone 

place there is but one point of time known as 

eleven o'clock April 26, 1890, the question may be 

asked as to how it is possible for assimilation of 

such a fact to take place ? The question can be 
19 



282 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

readily answered if we bear in mind that what we 
mean by " eleven o'clock yesterday" is a complex 
idea. Before a child can understand it, he must 
know the meaning of " yesterday " and u eleven 
o'clock " — and this is possible only by discrimina- 
tion and assimilation. But with these two ideas 
as elements, all that is necessary to the formation 
of the complex notion, expressed by the phrase, 
eleven o'clock yesterday, is a synthesis of the two 
through the exercises of the constructive imagina- 
tion. To say, therefore, that discrimination and 
assimilation, constitute knowing is incorrect. To 
know such a fact as the one we have been consid- 
ering and indeed all facts which require the activ- 
ity of the constructive imagination is to discrim- 
inate, and assimilate, and perform an act of syn- 
thesis. 

We have seen that the three processes in- 
volved in conception are comparison — putting 
the attention on two or more objects at the same 
time; in other words, discriminating them from 
all other objects; abstraction — withdrawing the 
attention from their unlike qualities and fixing it 
upon their resemblances; in other words, assimi- 
lating them; and, generalization — thinking of 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 283 

their like qualities as the basis of a class, which 
is a further act of assimilation. 

In order to judge, we must know the subject 
and predicate; and to do this, we must discrimin- 
ate and assimilate them. I can not judge that oak 
trees lose their leaves in autumn unless I know 
what oak trees are and what is meant by losing 
their leaves; and when I know the subject and 
predicate of a judgment and judge affirmatively, I 
assimilate them ; and when I judge negatively, I 
discriminate them. 

The same is true of reasoning. When I say 
that John is mortal, since he is a man and all men 
are mortal, my conclusion is the result of two acts 
of assimilation ; the assimilation of John to the 
class men, and of these to the class mortals. 

When I say that since this and that and the 
other unsupported body have fallen, therefore all 
unsupported bodies will, I have perceived, in the 
first place, the resemblance between the unsup- 
ported bodies I have seen — I have assimilated 
them, in a word; and, in the second place, I have 
assimilated them to all other unsupported bodies. 

Since all knowing consists to so great an ex- 
tent of discrimination and assimilation, it may 



284 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

seem strange at first sight that there are so many 
different kinds of knowing. The explanation is 
found, in part, in the fact that the knowing powers 
of the mind are exercised on very different mate- 
rials. The discrimination and assimilation of sin- 
gle sensations leads to the knowledge of sensations ; 
of groups of sensations to the perception of objects 
which result in percepts ; of percepts, to concepts ; 
of concepts, to judgments ; of judgments, to con- 
clusions. 

But if all knowing consists in discrimination 
and assimilation, if nothing is known until it is 
discriminated and assimilated, how can there be a 
first act of knowledge? In other words, how is it 
possible for a child to perform the acts of discrim- 
ination and assimilation for the first time, since 
because it is the first time, he can have known 
nothing from which to discriminate the thing 
he is in the act of knowing, and to which to 
assimilate it? A careful study of children will 
put us on the track of the right answer. If we 
observe children, we shall be able to understand 
the paradox, " Knowledge begins in ignorance. " 
We shall realize the truth to which I have so often 
called your attention — that it is one thing to have 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 285 

a sensation and another to know that we have it. 
We may conceive, I think, a first knowledge as 
gradually arising out of ignorance, so gradually 
that it would be impossible for us to say, even if 
we had the most accurate knowledge of a child's 
mind just when the first act of knowledge was per- 
formed. Probably discrimination first takes place. 
A child has a sensation and knows that it is differ- 
ent from other sensations which he is experiencing 
at the same time, and perhaps also from those 
which he has just experienced. Upon a recur- 
rence of the sensation, he may recall the preced- 
ing case ; if so, there is not only discrimination but 
assimilation, in other words, knowledge ; if not, 
again there is only discrimination, and knowledge 
waits until the process of assimilation takes place. . 

LIST OF QUESTIONS. 

i. What is the intellect? 

2. What are the primary intellectual func- 
tions ? 

3. Show that in perceiving, remembering, 
imagining, conceiving, judging and reasoning, we 
are only discriminating and assimilating. 



286 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

4. Explain how it is that there are so many 
different kinds of knowing. 

5. How does knowledge begin ? 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 287 



LESSON XXXIV. 

THE PRIMARY INTELLECTUAL FUNCTIONS CON- 
TINUED. 




N the last lesson we saw that perception, 
memory, imagination, conception, judging, 
and reasoning are only processes of dis- 
crimination and assimilation exercised on different 
materials. 

This being so, the question, How can I impart 
knowledge most clearly, can be put more definitely. 
From the point of view we have now reached, we 
are able to see that the question is, How can I 
enable my pupils to discriminate and assimilate 
most perfectly ? 

If you wish to find for yourself a clear answer 
to this question, you will do well to ponder upon 
the following principle : Objects and wholes of any 
kind are more easily discriminated and assimilated 
than qualities and parts. The ground of this prin- 
ciple is evident. Objects and wholes of any kind 
differ from each other in more marked and striking- 
ways than qualities and parts, and consequently 



288 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

can be more easily discriminated. Since they also 
resemble each other in a greater number of par- 
ticulars they can be more easily discriminated. 

But you may easily settle its truth by appeal- 
ing to your own experience. Which do you rec- 
ognize more easily and certainly, your friends as 
wholes or their individual features? Try to de- 
scribe the features of your most intimate friends in 
their absence and you will see. You w 7 ill often find 
yourself ludicrously uncertain as to the shape of 
the nose, the color of the eyes and hair, to say 
nothing of less prominent features. All of us like- 
wise recognize a rose when we see it, but it re- 
quires the training of the botanist to point out the 
qualities which distinguish it from all other flowers. 

In the lessons on Conception, you will re- 
member that I called your attention to the fact 
that the greater part of our concepts are implicit ; 
in other words, that we can often recognize objects 
when we cannot tell how or why we recognize 
them. I hope it is clear to you that the reason 
for this is that we have discriminated and assimi- 
lated the whole object but not its parts and 
qualities. 

This distinction between implicit and explicit 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 289 

concepts coincides with the distinction between 
clear and distinct knowledge. In other words, 
when we have an implicit concept of a thing we 
are said to know it clearly ; when we have an ex- 
plicit concept of it, we are said to know it dis- 
tinctly. When I can simply recognize a rose 
without being able to tell how or why I recognize 
it, I have a clear knowledge of it, and likewise an 
implicit concept of it ; when I can tell why I 
recognize it, I know it distinctly and have an 
explicit concept of it. 

It is evident that before we can know a thing 
distinctly we must know it clearly, or before we 
can have an explicit concept of. a thing we must 
have an implicit concept of it. In other words, 
before we can discriminate and assimilate the parts 
or qualities of wholes or objects, we must discrimi- 
nate and assimilate the wholes or objects. 

And here we get an illustration of the im- 
portance of the principle upon which, as I have 
said, the art of communicating knowledge chiefly 
depends. What is it to define a word ? It is to 
state those qualities or characteristics of the class 
of things of which the word is the name which 
are usually associated with it. To define "man," 



290 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

for example, is to state those qualities or charac- 
teristics of man which are usually associated with 
the name. But it is evident that I cannot do this 
until I can discriminate and assimilate the quali- 
ties that distinguish man from all other animals, 
and to do this, I must have a distinct knowledge, 
or explicit concept of him. 

Since the definition of a word is a statement 
of the parts or qualities of a thing of which we 
have an explicit concept, we have a good general 
rule to go by, especially in all our elementary 
teaching : Develop implicit concepts before seek- 
ing to develop explicit concepts ; or, seek to give 
your pupils clear knowledge before trying to give 
them distinct knowledge ; or, try to enable your 
pupils to recognize objects before teaching them 
the definition of their names. Unless you observe 
this rule, your teaching of definitions will often be 
nothing but a process of fixing unmeaning words 
in the minds of your pupils. If you wish to give 
your pupils the power to define z noun, do not 
imagine you have done so, to any educational pur- 
pose, when you have succeeded in making them 
commit the words of a definition to memory. Defi- 
nitions are valuable simply as means of developing 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 291 

in the mind explicit concepts. If they accomplish 
this purpose, they are valuable ; if they fail in this, 
they are of no more use than would be the knowl- 
edge of a sentence in Sanscrit without a knowledge 
of its meaning. But if in defining words you take 
pains first to give your pupils an explicit concept, 
you pave the way for a thorough comprehension of 
your definition ; in other words, you supply the 
conditions for the development of an explicit con- 
cept. In defining u noun," for instance, you should 
naturally proceed somewhat as follows : Hold a 
book before them and ask them what it is. When 
they have told you, write the word " book " on the 
board and ask them what it is. Then ask them to 
give you the names of some of the objects in the 
school-room — along the road that leads to the 
school, and some of the people they know. Write 
them down, and then say that all those names are 
nouns. At that stage you may imagine that you 
have given them a clear knowledge or an implicit 
concept of a noun, but you cannot be sure of that. 
We are very likely to under-rate children's difficul- 
ties, and so, in order to be sure that the child has 
an implicit concept of a noun, you ask him to 
give you more examples. If he cannot do this, 



292 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

you must continue in the same way — get him to 
give you more names, each time telling him that 
the name is a noun, until when you ask him to 
give you further examples of nouns he can do so. 
Then he has an implicit concept, a clear knowl- 
edge of a noun, and then he is ready for the defi- 
nition. Indeed, the chances are that some member 
of the class will be able to define the word for you. 
For as naturally as a flower develops from a bud, 
so naturally, to use an illustration given by one of 
my pupils, does distinct knowledge develop from 
clear knowledge. 

I said above, that the rule of which I have 
been speaking is a good general rule. The very 
case we have been considering will enable us to 
see that there are exceptions. Instead of teaching 
a child the definition of a noun in the way I have 
described, we might have made short work of it 
by requiring him to commit the definition to 
memory. Why is the former method preferable? 
(i.) Because it occasions more mental activity. 
That method leads the pupil to make the defini- 
tion for himself. (2.) Because it is more interest- 
ing. Any method which occasions the mind's 
activity is interesting. (3.) Because you can be 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 293 

sure in this way that you are not teaching words 
simply. 

A pupil with a good mind and some consider- 
able degree of maturity, might not get enough 
mental exercise out of that mode of learning the 
definition of a noun to make it preferable to the 
shorter method. What method should be used in 
any particular case is a question for your own tact 
to determine. The more elementary the teach- 
ing, the greater the need of observing the rule 
above laid down. And at any stage, if you are in 
doubt as to whether to follow the rule or not, I 
think you will be likely to be on the safe side by 
giving the rule the benefit of the doubt. 

That we must proceed from the simple to the 
complex, from the indefinite to the definite, from 
the unqualified to the qualified, is another well- 
established pedagogical rule. What is its psycho- 
logical basis? Plainly that a simple, indefinite, or 
unqualified fact or statement is more easily dis- 
criminated and assimilated than a complex, defi- 
nite, or qualified fact or statement. If you are 
teaching a child the form of the outlines of South 
America, you will succeed best by ignoring its 
irregularities in the beginning. With the map 



294 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

before him, make him conscious of its general re- 
semblance to a triangle or a ham of meat, or other 
familiar object, before you try to teach him how it 
differs in shape from them. If in such ways you 
fix the general outline in his mind before advanc- 
ing to the details, you will impart clear ideas. 
And why? Because you are working in harmony 
with the laws of his mind. 

There is a stronger resemblance between the 
outline of South America and a triangle than there 
is between it and any other simple figure, and if 
the child has a familiar knowledge of a triangle, 
he assimilates the general shape of South America 
as soon as his attention is called to it. Indeed, so 
far as thought is concerned, this ease comes under 
the general principle spoken of in the first part of 
this lesson — wholes and objects are more easily 
discriminated and assimilated than parts and qual- 
ities. To thought, South America has the shape 
of a triangle — a whole — qualified by certain ir- 
regularities. In other words, just as the mind 
grasps a whole before it does the parts, so it 
grasps the triangle in South America before it 
does the deviations from a triangle. So likewise 
of the unqualified or indefinite in relation to the 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 295 

qualified or definite. In relation to thought, the 
unqualified and indefinite are wholes first known 
as such before they are qualified and made defi- 
nite, and the qualities are parts. 

LIST OF QUESTIONS. 

1. State another form in which the question, 
How can I impart knowledge most clearly? may 
be put and show that it means the same. 

2. State and illustrate an important principle 
to be observed in imparting knowledge. 

3. What is the difference between clear and 
distinct knowledge? 

4. Show the bearing of the distinction on 
teaching definitions. 

5. Illustrate. 

6. Show that the rule for teaching definitions 
is only a general rule. 

7. Why should we proceed from the simple 
to the complex ? 




296 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

LESSON XXXV. 

THE PRIMARY INTELLECTUAL FUNCTIONS. 

N the last lesson, I called your attention to 
an important pedagogical principle, name- 
ly : Objects and wholes of any kind are 
more easily discriminated and assimilated than 
parts and qualities. I wish to emphasize the range 
of this principle, to call your attention to the fact 
that you must not limit its application to material 
objects, and material wholes. It applies to thought 
wholes as well. Indeed strictly speaking ail 
wholes are thought wholes, wholes made by 
thought, wholes because the mind chooses to think 
of them as such. There is absolutely nothing in 
existence except the universe which we may not 
think of as a part if we choose. The universe, in- 
cluding everything, cannot be thought of as a part 
of any thing else. A part from that, it is thinking 
and thinking only which makes a thing a part or a 
whole. 

If I may digress for a moment here, I will 
say that a great deal of poor teaching of fractious 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 297 

grows out of a failure to keep this fact in miud. 
A fraction is defined as one or more of the equal 
parts of a unit, as though units were things of fixed 
and unchangeable values. I divide an apple into 
four equal parts, and you ask me if one of these 
equal parts is a fourth. I do not know how to 
answer the question, or rather the question does 
not admit of an answer until it is made more 
definite. If you ask me what I call one of the 
parts in relation to the other three, I answer, a unit. 
It is one in relation to the other three, two in rela- 
tion to eighths, four in relation to sixteenths, and 
one-fourth in relation to the apple. The apple itself 
is one-fourth when considered in relation to a 
group of four apples, one-eighth in relation to a 
group of eight apples and so on. As the mind 
decides in w 7 hat relations it will consider things, it 
is clear that all wholes as such are products of the 
mind. The reason why certain wholes as apples, 
oranges, horses, dogs, etc., are thought of as wholes 
in a special sense is that the purposes of life and 
their relation to each other make it natural for the 
mind to consider them as such. If this is clear, 
we may say that a whole is anything, mental or 

material, which the mind chooses to regard as a 
20 



298 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

whole. Thus we may think of the life and public 
services of Alexander Hamilton as wholes. And 
in accordance with the principle I have been dis- 
cussing, the student will be best assisted in getting 
clear ideas of the life of that great man by having 
his attention called, to its broad general character- 
istics first, before these are modified and qualified. 
If the student learns that Hamilton was first a 
Tory, then a Democrat, and finally a believer in a 
strongly centralized aristocratic Republic, the 
broad outlines of Hamilton's political creed lie be- 
fore him — they are the triangle in the outlines of 
South America. The qualifications and specific 
description of these characterizations, will put the 
changes in and final character of Hamilton's polit- 
ical creed with the utmost definiteness before him. 
So if your object is to give your class a clear idea 
of Hamilton's public services, first give them a 
clear idea of the great work of his life — the 
strengthening and centralizing of the general 
government ; then they are ready for the details, 
the measures and influences by which these were 
reached. 

You should carefully note that the principle 
we have been considering relates to the communica- 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 299 

tion of knowledge. I think I have called your 
attention to the fact that there are two methods, 
called by Jevors the method of instruction and the 
method of discovery. If you are using the method 
of discovery, if you are trying to take the minds 
of your pupils along the course taken by the 
mind of the discoverer, trying to make him 
find out for himself the truths you wish him to 
learn, you will of course follow a different plan. 
You will make him acquainted with the details 
first, in the hope that he may see the underlying 
principle — as I exp 1 ained at length in discussing 
the Objective Method of teaching. When you 
should use the method of instruction and when 
the method of discovery is a question, which, as I 
said in the last lesson, must be left to your own 
tact to answer. 

That we must proceed from the known to the 
unknown is another well established rule in Ped- 
agogy. It is hardly necessary to say that it is 
based on the fact that all knowing consists to so 
great an extent in discriminating and assimilating. 
When I learn a new fact — till then, of course, 
unknown — I put it in a class of already known 
facts. 



300 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

How easy it is to violate the rule, simple as 
it is, no one but the very observant teacher duly 
appreciates. Nothing but the closest observation, 
based on long experience, will enable a teacher to 
realize how likely he is in his explanations to 
assume that his pupils know what they do not 
know. We are very apt to project ourselves, so to 
speak, into the minds of others, and think that 
what is familiar to us is familiar to them. The 
teacher, indeed, who talks for the sake of teaching, 
who explains in order to make things clear, and 
who realizes the immense difficulty of his work 
will never neglect to use measures to determine 
whether or not he has succeeded. He will, in the 
first place, encourage his pupils to ask questions. 
In an entirely practical and unpedantic way, he 
will make them understand that his business as a 
teacher is primarily to remove the obstacles to, 
and supply the conditions of, growth. If he does 
his work so thoroughly as to make that impression 
upon his pupils, and if he arouses a genuine in- 
terest in the subject, they will do much to make 
him aware of his error when he assumes in his 
explanations that they know what they do not 
know — the error of going from the unknown to 
the unknown. But he cannot depend upon this. 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 301 

There are pupils in every class who are 
enough interested in a subject to exert them- 
selves sufficiently to comprehend an explanation 
adapted to their knowledge and development, but 
who do not care enough about it to ask questions. 
Such pupils will often indeed say that they under- 
stand an explanation when they do not, because, 
as they will say to each other, they are tired of 
hearing the teacher talk about it. To meet such 
cases, the teacher must employ another resource ; 
he must require his pupils to reproduce his ex- 
planation. If the pupil understands it, his repro- 
duction of it tends to fix it in his mind and the 
minds of his classmates ; if he does not, the teacher 
learns just where the difficulty is and what he 
must do to remedy it. And instead of giving the 
remedy himself, it will often be useful to call on 
some member of the class to come to the assist- 
ance of his classmate. The freshest and most 
open - minded teacher will often catch himself 
thinking in grooves and ruts and using stereotyped 
phrases, and will sometimes be delighted to see 
his own idea reproduced by one of his pupils 
more clearly and forcibly than he himself had 
given it. Further, the teacher who is resolved to 



302 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

proceed from the known to the unknown dare not 
suppose that, having imparted a piece of knowl- 
edge, he can assume it as known thereafter, and 
start from that as a basis. In the first place, 
pupils often forget ; and in the second, even when 
they remember, they often have such an imperfect 
grasp of what they know as to be unable to use it 
in thinking. A man who has just learned the 
value of English coins would not be ready to take 
a position as a bank clerk in England. He would 
either make multitudes of mistakes, or do his work 
so slowlv as to be of little use for the first few 
days. So a student who has acquired new ideas 
must become familiar with them, he must look at 
them from this point of view and that, consider 
them in a variety of relations, before he can use 
them as tools in thinking. 

Perhaps I shall have no more convenient 
place than this to speak of the function of re- 
views. It is, for the most part, to give precisely 
that familiarity to ideas which makes it possible 
for the student to work with them. The student 
who can repeat a declamation slowly only after 
prolonged thinking, is not prepared to declaim it. 
And in like manner, the student who can only 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 303 

with great effort recall the meaning of certain 
terms, is not prepared to use them in thinking. It 
is unfortunate that the term u review " is usually 
limited to going oyer a subject a second time, im- 
mediately after it has been gone over on the 
advance, and just before examination. That con- 
ception tends to promulgate the idea that reviews, 
are useful only to fix things in the mind of the 
student in order that he can tell them. If they 
are only good for that, they are hardly good for 
anything. There are three stages of knowing. 
In the first, knowledge is merely implicit; the 
student can not express what he knows. Such 
knowledge is useful as a foundation for something 
better; but if it never leaves that stage, it is 
almost worthless. In the second, it has become 
explicit ; the student can tell what he knows, but 
he does not know it fluently enough, so to speak, 
to use it in thinking. In the third, the student 
not only knows, but knows so well that he can 
use his knowledge in thinking. His knowledge 
has become thoroughly assimilated; it has become 
a part, as it were, of the warp and woof, the flesh, 
and bone, and blood of his mind. To develop 
knowledge into that shape, is, I repeat, the great 
function of reviews. 



304 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

LIST OF QUESTIONS. 

i. What is a thought whole ? 

2. Illustrate. 

3. Explain the methods of instruction and 
discovery. 

4. How can you avoid assuming that your 
pupils know what they do not? 

5. What is the use of reviews? 

6. What are the three stages of knowing? 

7. Illustrate. 




LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 305 

LESSON XXXVI. 

DEVELOPMENT. 

E saw in our first lessons that the primary 
end of education is development. After 
having' made a survey, superficial though 
it has been, of the intellectual faculties, we may 
profitably consider a little more closely what it 
means and what its conditions are. 

Aristotle said: u It is a shame not to have 
been educated ; for he who has received an educa- 
tion differs from him who has not, as the living 
does from the dead." I know not where to go to 
find a more forcible statement of the nature of 
education. And yet it is misleading. The differ- 
ence between the educated and the uneducated 
man is not so much akin to that between the 
living and the dead, as to that between the fully 
developed tree and the seed from which it sprang. 
The two contrasted ideas are not life and death, 
but completeness, fullness of life, and incomplete- 
ness, defectiveness of life. 

In order to get our pupils to obtain that abun- 



306 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

dance of life and power which it is the object of 
education to give, we must of course induce them 
to exercise their powers. If their powers of ob- 
servation, memory, imagination, reasoning, etc., 
are to be developed, we must get them to observe, 
remember, imagine, reason, — there is no other 
way. This is the reason for that o It-quoted max- 
im that it is not what we do for our pupils but 
what we induce them to do for themselves that 
educates them. You can no more observe or re- 
member or think for your pupils than you can 
eat or drink for them. But as an intelligent 
mother can tempt the appetite of her ailing child 
with food adapted to its digestive powers, so you 
can induce your pupils to exercise their powers 
by presenting material adapted to their minds, 
and the result of a systematic exercise of the 
powers of the mind is education. 

It is putting the same fact in another light to 
say that all education is the formation of certain 
habits. Dr. Reed said : " As without instinct, the 
infant could not live to become a man, so without 
habit man would remain an infant through life, 
and would be as helpless, as unhandy, as speech- 
less, and as much a child in understanding at three 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 307 

score as at three." This doubtless seems to you a 
strong statement, and yet a literal acceptance of it 
would lead you to under-estimate, rather than over- 
estimate, the work of habit. If a child's sensa- 
tions become more definite, if his perceptions be- 
come clearer, if his memory becomes more accu- 
rate, if his imaginations come to correspond more 
and more with facts, if he reasons more and more 
correctly and logically, it is because of habit. 
Habit is the architect that builds the feeble, rudi- 
mentary powers of the child into the strong, de- 
veloped powers of the full grown man. What is 
the T v aw of Habit ? It is that every time we per- 
form any action, mental or physical, we have more 
proneness to, and a greater facility for, the per- 
formance of that action under similar circum- 
stances than we had before. All the curious ges- 
tures, ways of holding the hands, attitudes, modes 
of speech, and the like that characterize the var- 
ious people we know are due to the Law of Habit. 
Sully says that the " formation of a disposition 
to think, feel, etc., in the same way as before, 
underlies what we call habit," and that u in its 
most comprehensive sense" it means "a fixed 
tendency to think, feel, or act in a particular way 



308 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

under special circumstances. " He thinks that 
" habit refers to the fixing of mental operations in 
particular directions, " and hence, that it does not 
constitute the sole ingredient of intellectual devel- 
opment. He thinks that it is " the element of per- 
sistence, of custom, the conservative tendency" and 
that since " growth implies flexibility, modifiabil- 
ity, susceptibility to new impressions, the progres- 
sive tendency/' " habit is in a manner opposed to 
growth." 

Is he .ight? Is it true that habit is in a man- 
ner opposed to growth? If so, education means 
more than the formation of certain habits, and I 
have over-stated the importance of the Law of 
Habit. 

If I mistake not, his opinion grows out of a 
failure to distinguish between habits and Habit. 
Many particular habits undoubtedly are bad. A 
man may form the habit of reasoning on insuffi- 
cient data, or of observing carelessly, he may form 
the habit of forgetting that he is finite and so liable 
to mistakes — that all that he has thought on any 
subject may be wrong because he may have over- 
looked some fact already known, or because some 
unknown fact may make all his conclusions wrong. 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 309 

He may form the habit of laying great emphasis 
on consistency, that " hobgoblin of little minds," 
and so go through the world with his head turned 
over his shoulder determining what he will believe 
to day by what he believed yesterday. He may 
form the habit of deciding what he will believe by 
some other principle than reason. As the Chinese 
go to Confucius, and Catholics to the Pope, to tell 
them what to believe, so he may go to his father, 
or some politician, or the convention of his party, 
or his newspaper to tell him what ^ believe. 
These habits are unfavorable to growth and are 
therefore bad habits, but is there anything in the 
nature of Habit to make it necessary for us to form 
bad habits ? Are there not some open-minded, 
cautious, independent reasoners? And what is 
an open-minded reasoner? He is one who has 
formed the habit of being constantly on the alert 
to find new evidence, one who knows and feels that 
when men have done their utmost to avoid error, 
they cannot be so sure they are right as to shut 
their minds to all further considerations — one 
who has so habituated himself to considering the 
supreme difficulty of arriving at the truth in any 
matter of complexity that he is rather inclined to 



310 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

wonder that men are ever right, than to assume 
that they can consider themselves as undoubtedly 
right whenever they reach a conclusion. What is 
a cautious reasoner ? He is one who has so accus- 
tomed himself to the thought of the infiniteness of 
the universe, that what is known in comparison 
with what is y seems to him like a drop of water in 
comparison with the Pacific Ocean, and hence he 
habitually realizes the supreme necessity of collec- 
ting as many facts as possible bearing on any mat- 
ter under consideration before he reaches a conclu- 
sion. What is an independent reasoner? He is 
one who has no Confucius, one who does not go to 
his father, or to any influential politican, or to his 
party convention, or his newspaper to find out 
what to believe — one who does not use his reason 
merely to find arguments to defend conclusions 
furnished him from some external source, but to 
learn what is true. 

Is there any antagonism between such habits 
and growth ? Can we say that such habits repre- 
sent the conservative tendency? I can not think 
so. When teachers come to realize that this char- 
acteristic of open-mindedness, and caution, and 
independence is not only one of the rarest among 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 311 

educated men, but one of the most important; 
when they realize that no matter how able and 
brilliant a man may seem, he is a fossil, a thing of 
arrested development, precisely to the extent to 
which he is lacking in this characteristic ; when 
they have become profoundly convinced of the 
fact that the supreme difference between the most 
progressive civilizations in the world and such 
nations as the Chinese, is that the people of the 
former have formed the habit, to some extent, of 
going to reason to tell them what to believe, and 
the people of the latter have formed the habit of 
accepting their beliefs on authority, they will not 
only be sure that there is no antagonism between 
growth and habit, but that an important part of 
their work consists in rooting up the habits which 
would confine the thoughts of their pupils within 
the thoughts of the past, by helping them to form 
habits of open-minded, cautious, independent rea- 
soning. 

I hope you will pardon me for repeating here 
that you can not help your pupils to form that 
habit until you have formed it for yourself. It is 
the example of open-minded, cautious, indepen- 
dent reasoning ; it is the fervid appeal to students 



312 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

not to imitate a flock of sheep, who jump when 
their leader has jumped, and do not jump when 
he has not jumped, without regard to the consid- 
erations that influenced him — a fervor which can 
emanate only from one who so believes in, as to 
practice that kind of reasoning; it is the keen and 
merciless exposure of the utter irrationality of un- 
reasonableness by one whose whole being is satur- 
ated with the conviction ; this it is that gives 
students the strongest impulse to the formation of 
the habit of reasoning in this way. 

So far as education consists in the formation 
of good habits, it is evident that the work of the 
teacher consists in putting the pupil in such a 
position as to induce him to act so that good 
habits will be the result. How can he do this? 
We shall get some light on this question when we 
consider the factors and order of development. 

LIST OF QUESTIONS. 

i. State and criticize Aristotle's definition of 
education. 

2. What is the Law of Habit? 

3. How does Sully define it? 

4. Is he right ? 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 313 

5. Distinguish between Habit and habits, 

6. What can you do to help your pupils be- 
come careful, cautious, and independent reasoners? 



21 




314 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

LESSON XXXVII. 

DEVELOPMENT. 

E saw in the last lesson that a large part of 
the teacher's work consists in putting his 
pupils in such positions, bringing such in- 
fluences to bear upon them as to induce them to 
act so that they may form good mental habits. 
That he may do this successfully, it is desirable for 
him to have a clear apprehension of the order and 
conditions of development. 

When I say that the faculties of the intellect 
develop in a certain order, I mean that they reach 
maturity in a certain order. I believe that -most of 
them begin to develop about the same time. Cer- 
tainly perception, the second to reach maturity, in- 
volves memory, imagination, and reasoning. But 
although they begin to develop about the same 
time, they get their growth at very different times, 
though in an invariable order. 

The order in which the faculties of the mind 
develop is the same in which we have considered 
them — sensation, perception, memory, imagina- 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 315 

tion — first reproductive and then constructive — 
and thinking, in the three forms of conception, 
judging, and reasoning. 

The pedagogical rules that follow from the 
order in which the faculties develop are very ob- 
vious, but none the less important. Since the 
power to have sensations is first developed, it 
should be first cultivated. Fortunately for the 
child, that part of his education is in the main at- 
tended to by nature. The incessant activity of the 
child but a few months old is a constant training 
of his senses under which his sensations become 
more and more definite. That part of his educa- 
tion is for the most part completed before he is old 
enough to go to school, though the teacher, espec- 
ially in the kindergarten, can do something in this 
direction. 

The faculty which ought especially to claim 
the attention of teachers in the primary grades is 
perception. That power is probably most active 
in the early years of school life. For this reason, 
children in these grades should be largely employed 
with objects. At this age, also, children are very 
active. They like to exercise their physical powers, 
and particularly dislike inactivity. This fact should 



316 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

on no account be lost sight of by the primary 
teacher. Keep children employed on work that is 
agreeable to them. It is not the number of hours 
per day that children sit in the school-room, but 
the quantity and quality of work they do that edu- 
cates them. When you cannot find anything for 
them to do, dismiss them. They will find employ- 
ment in the fields and woods. 

The period when memory reaches its maturi- 
ty — Bain thinks it is when the child is ten or 
eleven — marks the time designated by nature for 
the special exercise of the memory. Some exer- 
cise of the mechanical memory there must be, some 
learning by heart — this is the time when it is 
easiest. This is the time for learning choice selec- 
tions of prose and poetry. This is the time for 
learning the few dates in history which must be 
learned. Even at this age, pupils should not be 
required or permitted to memorize what they can 
attach no meaning to. It is proper enough to re- 
quire them to memorize what they cannot compre- 
hend, things, the causes of which, they cannot 
understand. But neither now nor at any other 
period should they be required to memorize what 
has no meaning to them. 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 317 

Both reproductive and constructive imagina- 
tion should receive the attention of the teacher. 
You should assist your pupils to develop reproduc- 
tive imagination by encouraging them to give 
accurate descriptions of what they see, permitting 
nothing of importance to be omitted, nothing that 
does not belong there to be inserted. You should 
encourage the exercise of constructive imagination 
in connection with language lessons. Pictures, 
for example, should be made the subject of stories 
in which the children exercise their power of in- 
vention. An important part of your work in this 
connection consists in getting your pupils to read 
works of fiction adapted to their stage of develop- 
ment. In this way, you accomplish the double 
purpose of cultivating their imagination, and form- 
ing their taste for good literature. 

The fact that thinking is the last of the pow- 
ers of the mind to develop, designates the place in 
a course of studies where abstract studies, such as 
grammar, should be taken up. Instead of being 
taken up in the primary grades, technical grammar 
should be left to the High School. It is as absurd 
to require a child to study technical grammar as it 
w r ould be to require him to do the work of a full- 



318 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

grown man. Language lessons, in which he is 
trained to use grammar, should be given him from 
his first year at school. It is said that the pupils 
in the schools of Chicago would hardly understand 
you if you asked them to tell you the parts of 
speech of the words of any given sentence. They 
study grammar by studying the masterpieces, of 
our great writers. Recognizing that the primary 
purpose of the study is to give pupils the power to 
use the language correctly, the teachers of Chicago 
put before their pupils models of good English, 
and require them to observe and imitate. This 
method of teaching grammar not only reaches the 
end in view, but accomplishes the no less impor- 
tant purpose of bringing the mind of the student 
into contact with good literature and cultivating 
his taste for it. But the science of grammar is 
beyond a child's comprehension because his reason- 
ing powers are not enough developed, and the 
attempt to teach it to him, generally results in a 
disgust with the subject and dislike of school. 

But you will not forget that though these 
powers get their growth in a certain order, they 
are all growing together and consequently should 
be exercised together to some extent. Though 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 319 

the primary purpose of object teaching is the cul- 
tivation of the observing powers, reason and mem- 
ory should not be neglected. And so all along. 
The skillful teacher will be constantly on the 
alert for an opportunity to awaken curiosity, to 
impart useful knowledge, to set his pupils to ob- 
serving, to get them to reason, no matter what the 
subject may be, or the primary purpose of its be- 
ing taught. 

But why is it that the faculties of the mind 
develop at all? In other words, what are the con- 
ditions of development? 

Evidently one condition is the action of nat- 
ural objects on the organs of sense. We have 
seen that knowledge begins with sensation ; that 
without sensation there would be no knowledge, 
and that a sensation is that mental state w r hich 
directly follows upon that change in the brain 
which normally results from a stimulation of the 
nerves of sense. If, therefore, there were no stim- 
ulation of the nerves of sense there would be no 
sensation. If the eye never came in contact with 
light, there w T ould be no sensations of color. If 
the ear never came in contact with vibrations of 
air, there would be no sensations of sound, and so 



320 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

on. And inasmuch as feeling and willing are de- 
pendent on knowing, it is clear that we should 
neither feel, nor know, nor will, were it not for 
the action of natural objects on the organs of 
sense. Borrowing a phrase from Sully, we may 
call this influence the action of the physical en- 
vironment. 

But while the mind would be aroused from 
the torpor of entire inactivity simply by the action 
of physical objects on the organs of sense, it 
would remain in a very crude undeveloped state 
indeed, if this were the only influence brought to 
bear upon it. Whether the child would ever learn 
to walk if he never saw anyone walking, I will 
not undertake to say. But there is no doubt that 
he would never learn to talk if he did not hear 
language spoken. And when we realize the almost 
absolute dependence of thought on language, 
we shall see that the presence of other^human be- 
ings is as essential to anything which deserves the 
name of mental development as it is to the physi- 
cal support of the child. 

If we wish to appreciate how extensive is the 
social environment, we have only to remember 
that everything which brings mind inio contact 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 32 1 

with mind is a part of it. This being true, it is 
clear that you may constantly extend your social 
environment if you choose to do so. When you 
grasp the meaning of a word before unknown to 
you, you bring your mind into contact with the 
mind of every one who has helped to give that 
word its meaning. You get from them a new in- 
strument of thought, and the more definite the 
meaning of the word, and the more precisely you 
have caught it, the more help it will give you in 
thinking. In like manner, whenever you add to 
your knowledge of history, you extend your social 
environment. The knowledge of what other 
men have thought and done, of what they strove 
to do and what they failed to do, brings your mind 
into contact with their minds, enlarges by so much 
your social environment. Every fact of science 
which you learjj has the same result. Every such 
fact was first a thought in the mind of its discov- 
erer. He proved it and made a record of it in 
a book, and thus brings his mind into contact with 
the mind of every one who learns it. 

LIST OF QUESTIONS. 

i. What is meant when it is said that the 



322 WESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

faculties of the intellect develop in a certain 
order ? 

2. Mention some of the pedagogical rules 
that follow from the fact that the faculties of the 
mind develop in a given older? 

3. What faculty should claim the especial 
attention of primary teachers? 

4. How should the imagination be trained ? 

5. How would you teach grammar to pupils 
below the age of twelve ? 

6. Mention some selections which you regard 
as suitable for that purpose. 

7. What is meant by the conditions of de- 
velopment ? 

8. State and explain them. 

9. Define sensation, perception, imagination, 
conception and reasoning. 




LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 323 

LESSON XXXVIII. 

DEVELOPMENT. 

OW potent is the social environment in shap- 
ing the"minds of men you will find it diffi- 
cult "to realize. At one time and in one 
country in the|history of the world, we find one 
ideal prevailing, and in another, another. In 
Sparta, the brave soldier ; in Athens, the symmet- 
rically developed man ; among the monks of the 
Middle Ages, the man who had completely re- 
nounced the world ; among the Jesuits, the man 
who not only does what his superior directs, but 
who thinks and feels as his superior does, is the 
ideal man. What is the explanation of this ? Are 
these ideals the conclusions of different chains of 
reasoning? Not at all. Question any of those 
who hold them, and the best answer you will get, 
the answer that goes to the root of the matter is 
that they seem to be true. And what is the expla- 
nation of this seeming ? 

I cannot answer that question with any thor- 
oughness here, but there is no doubt that it is due 



324 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

to the social environment. That acute writer, 
Walter Bagehot, in his suggestive book, called 
" Physics and Politics, " points out the fact that in 
the great majority of cases our beliefs are due not 
to processes of reasoning, but to our imitating the 
beliefs of those around us. He says : " The main 
seat of the imitative part of our nature is our be- 
liefs, and the causes predisposing us to believe 
this, or disinclining us to believe that, are among 
the obscurest parts of our nature. In - Eothen ' 
there is a capital description of how every sort 
of European resident in the East, even the shrewd 
merchant and the post captain, w 7 ith his bright, 
wakeful eyes of commerce comes soon to be- 
lieve in witchcrait, and to assure you in confi- 
dence that there ' really is something in it.' He 
has never seen anything convincing himself, but 
he has seen those who have seen those who have 
seen. In fact, he has lived in an atmosphere of in- 
fectious belief and he has inhaled it. Scarcely any 
one can help yielding to the current infatuations of 
his sect or party. For a short time — say some 
fortnight — he is resolute; he argues and objects; 
but, day by day, the poison thrives and reason 
wanes. What he hears from his friends, what he 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 325 

reads in the party organ, produces its effect. The 
plain, palpable conclusion which every one around 
him believes, has an influence yet greater and more 
subtle ; that conclusion seems so solid and unmis- 
takable ; his own good arguments get daily more 
and more like a dream. Soon the gravest sage 
shares the folly of the party with which he acts 
and the sect with which he worships." Every one 
must have noticed how much more he is influenced 
by the opinions of an able man whom he meets 
from day to day than he is by the opinions of a 
man whom he knows merely through books, but 
whose ability he estimates as much higher. The 
reason is that actual contact with a person holding 
a belief, appeals to the imitative part of our nature 
more strongly than the simple knowledge, gained 
by reading, that a certain individual holds the 
belief. 

But not merely are beliefs imbibed in this 
way due to the social environment, but also, as we 
have seen, those which are reached by processes 
of reasoning, provided some other mind thought 
out the reasons for us. And when we remember 
how little originality there is in the world, we 
shall begin to see to what an extent our beliefs are 



326 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

made for us, to what an extent they are due to 
our social environment. But what we feel and 
what we will, depend largely on what we believe. 
When one realizes all this, he begins to feel that 
he himself, like the food he eats and the coat he 
wears, is the product of all the world. 

We see, then, that the mind develops because 
the conditions of development are supplied, and 
that these are the physical and social environments. 
Teachers and schools, of course, influence develop- 
ment as a part of the social environment of their 
pupils. They influence development by doing 
more perfectly that which is done to a considera- 
ble extent without their aid. What the teacher 
should do, as we have already seen, is to form as 
clear a conception as possible of what he wishes to 
accomplish, and then put the minds of his pupils 
under such influences that they may develop in 
the desired direction. 

What, then, shall the teacher aim at? Hear 
Professor Huxley: u That man, I think, has had a 
liberal education who has been so trained in his 
youth that his body is the ready servant of his 
will, and does with ease and pleasure all the work 
that, as a mechanism, it is capable of; whose in- 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 327 

tellect is a clear, cold, logic-engine, with all its 
parts of equal strength, and in smooth working 
order ; ready, like a steam engine, to be turned to 
any kind of work, and spin the gossamers as well 
as forge the anchors of the mind ; whose mind is 
stored with a knowledge of the great and funda- 
mental truths of Nature, and of the laws of her 
operations; one who, no stunted ascetic, is full of 
life and fire, but whose passions are trained to 
come to heel by a vigorous will, the servant of a 
tender conscience; who has learned to love all 
beauty, whether of nature or art; to hate all vile- 
ness, and to respect others as himself." 

With the exception of a single clause, you 
will note that this entire paragraph is a descrip- 
tion of the kind of man that a liberal education 
should seek to produce. And no part of the man 
is left out. We should seek to train the body so 
that it may become the ready servant of the will, 
and " do with ease and pleasure, all the work, 
that as a mechanism, it is capable of." We should 
seek to train the intellect so that it may become a 
" clear, cold, logic-engine, with all its parts of 
equal strength, and in smooth working order." 
We should seek to train the feelings, so that the 



328 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

man may be " full of life and fire," so that he may 
"love all beauty, " and " hate all vileness," and 
" respect others as himself." We should seek to 
train the will, so that, in the language of Locke, 
our pupils may get the power to " cross their own 
inclinations and follow the dictates of reason." 

Were it not that Professor Huxley seems to 
imply that equal stress should be laid on all the 
various faculties of the mind, I should be disposed 
to accept this as a lairly clear statement of what 
is meant by symmetrical development of the mind 
and of the man. But I do not believe that all the 
faculties of the mind are of equal importance. I 
believe, with Dr. Harris, that there is such a thing, 
as an over-cultivation of the mechanical memory. 
The function of the memory and the powers of 
observation is to put before the reason and the 
higher faculties of the mind materials to act on. 
When they are cultivated beyond that point, the 
mind as a whole is weakened, instead of strength- 
ened. But would any one say that the reason can 
be too highly cultivated ? Is it possible for a man 
to have too strong a will, or too intense a feeling 
of the beauty of what is beautiful, or the hateful- 
ness of what is hateful? 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 329 

LIST OF QUESTIONS. 

i. State and illustrate what you mean by 
" the end of education. " 

2. State and illustrate what you mean by 
" physical and social environments. " 

3. What does Huxley understand by a liber- 
al education ? 

4. Do you agree with him ? 

5. What is the mechanical memory? 

6. What is the rational memory? 




330 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

LESSON XXXIX. 

DEVELOPMENT. 

ITH such a conception of your aim, how 
should you proceed to get the minds of 
your pupils to reach it ? You must watch 
nature and then try to improve upon her. To 
cultivate the observing powers, nature presents 
objects ; you must do likewise. But if you do no 
more than that, you will add nothing to the edu- 
cation of nature. Object lessons which consist 
in telling the pupils what you have observed, do 
nothing to cultivate their observing powers. You 
must get them to observe something which they 
have not observed before ; you must get them to 
observe closely, carefully, systematically. How 
are you to do this ? You can only do it by imi- 
tating nature. Nature supplies a motive. The 
incessant handling of this, and looking at that 
which so fill up the time of children, result from 
their interest in these things. You must interest 
them, but if you add nothing to the interest which 
the objects naturally excite, you will add nothing 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 33 1 

to the education of nature. You must deepen that 
interest. You must stimulate their curiosity by 
asking them questions which they cannot answer 
about objects which they think they know all about. 
You must connect things they are not much inter- 
ested in with things which they are interested in. 
You must give them the pleasure of finding out 
things for themselves. Above all, you must show an 
interest in their discoveries ; the more the better, if 
you really have it. Herbert Spencer brings out 
this point so clearly and forcibly that I hope you 
will pardon me for quoting him at length. " What 
can be more manifest than the desire of children 
for intellectual sympathy ? Mark how the infant, 
sitting on your knee, thrusts into your face the 
toy it holds, that you, too, may look at it. See 
when it makes a creak with its wet fingers on the 
table how it turns and looks at you ; does it again 
and again look at you, thus saying as clearly as it 
can : ' Hear this new sound.' Watch how the 
elder children come into the room exclaiming: 
'Mamma, see what a curious thing/ 'Mamma, 
look at this,' 'Mamma, look at that,' and would 
continue the habit did not the silly mamma tell 
them not to tease her." 



33^ LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

Observe how, when out with the nurse-maid, 
each little one runs up to her with the new flower 
it has gathered, to show her how pretty it is, and 
to get her also to say it is pretty. Listen to the 
eager volubility with which every urchin describes 
any novelty he has been to see, if only he can find 
some one who will attend with any interest. Does 
not the indication lie on the surface? Is it not 
clear that we must conform our course to these in- 
tellectual instincts ; that we must first systematize 
the natural process ; that we must listen to all the 
child has to tell us about each object ; must induce 
it to say everything it can think of about such ob- 
jects ; must occasionally draw its attention to facts 
it has not yet observed, with the view of leading 
it to notice them itself wherever they recur, and 
must go on, by-and-by, to indicate or supply new 
series of things for a like exhaustive examination ? 
See the way in which, on this method, the intelli- 
gent mother conducts her lessons. Step by step 
she familiarizes her little boy with the names of 
the simpler attributes, hardness, softness, color, 
taste, size, etc., in doing which she finds him 
eagerly helping by bringing this to show her that 
it is red, and the other to make her feel that it 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 333 

is hard, as fast as she gives him words for these 
properties. Each additional property, as she draws 
his attention to it in some fresh thing which he 
brings her, she takes care to mention in connec- 
tion with those he already knows ; so that by the 
natural tendency to imitate, he may get into the 
habit of repeating them one after another. Grad- 
ually, as there occur cases in which he omits to 
name one or more of the properties he has become 
acquainted with, she introduces the practice of 
asking him whether there is not something more 
that he can tell her about the things he has got. 
Probably he does not understand. After letting 
him puzzle awhile, she tells him ; perhaps laugh- 
ing at him a little foi his failure. A few recur- 
rences of this, and he perceives what is to be done. 
When next she says she knows something 
more about the object than he has told her, his 
pride is roused ; he looks at it intently ; he thinks 
over all that he has heard, and, the problem being 
easy, presently finds it out. He is full of glee at 
his success, and she sympathizes with him. In 
common with every child he delights in the dis- 
covery of his powers. He wishes for more victor- 
ies, and goes in quest of more things about which 



334 LKSSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

to tell her. As his faculties unfold, she adds qual- 
ity after quality to his list ; progressing from hard- 
ness and softness to roughness and smoothness ; 
from color to polish ; from simpler bodies to com- 
posite ones — thus constantly complicating the 
problem as he gains competence, constantly taxing 
his attention and memory to a greater extent, con- 
stantly maintaining his interest by supplying him 
with new impressions such as his mind can assim- 
ilate, and constantly gratifying him by conquests 
over such small difficulties as he can master. In 
doing this she is manifestly but following out that 
spontaneous process that was going on during a 
Still earlier ^period, simply aiding self-evolution ; 
and is aiding it in the mode suggested by the boy's 
instinctive behavior to her. Manifestly, too, the 
course she is pursuing is the one best calculated to 
establish a habit of exhaustive observation ; which 
is the proposed aim of these lessons. To tell a 
child this and to show it the other, is not to teach 
it how to observe, but to make it a mere recipient 
ot another's observations ; a proceeding which 
weakens rather than strengthens its powers of self- 
instruction — which deprives it of the pleasures 
resulting from successful activity — which presents 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 335 

this all-attractive knowledge under the guise of 
formal tuition — and which thus generates that in- 
difference and even disgust with which these object 
lessons are not infrequently regarded. On the 
other hand, to pursue the course above described 
is simply to guide the intellect to its appropriate 
food ; to join with the intellectual appetites their 
natural adjuncts — amour propre^ and the desire 
for sympathy ; to induce by the union of all these 
an intensity of attention which assures perceptions 
alike vivid and complete ; and to habituate the 
mind from the beginning to that practice of self- 
help which it must ultimately follow." 

So it is with every other faculty of the mind ' 
your work consists in supplying the conditions of 
development — presenting the material appropri- 
ate to the faculty, and seeing to it that there is a 
motive to induce the pupil to exercise it. 

But w r hile I agree with those educators who 
think that the work of the school should be made 
pleasurable, both in order that the pupil may have 
the strongest motive for studying, and in order 
that the teacher may have confidence that his sub- 
jects and methods only call for a normal exercise 
of the powers of his pupils, I think that the doc- 



336 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

trine is often exaggerated. One of the most pop- 
ular of our educational papers some time ago said 
that " the true management of any recitation will 
make it just as exciting and just as much fun as a 
base ball game can possibly be," and in a similar 
view, Horace Mann said: " Tell a child the simp- 
lest story adapted to his stage of mental advance- 
ment, and he will go without play, leave food 
untasted," and so on. To all this, I can only reply 
that I have seen no such recitations and know no 
such children. If it were practicable to give each 
boy and girl a separate teacher, as Locke recom- 
mended, we might possibly avoid requiring a pupil 
to study any subject when he did not feel like it, or 
when he preferred to study something else. But 
in a system of class instruction this is impossible. 
At a given hour in the day, your pupil must study 
arithmetic. Perhaps he has just been reciting his 
history lesson. If you have made the recitation 
interesting, he would like to go on with that. You 
have told him of certain books that treat the mat- 
ter more fully and he is eager to look them up at 
once. Hence the more successful you are in inter- 
esting your pupils, the more impossible it is to 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 337 

avoid an element of irksomeness in the work of 
the school. 

And if it were possible to rely entirely on 
interest as a motive, I do not believe it would be 
desirable. It is an exceedingly important part of 
education for one to acquire the power to do dis- 
agreeable things. To say nothing of more impor- 
tant reasons, unless you help your pupils to form 
the habit of doing what is reasonable, whether it 
is pleasant or not, their intellectual development 
will certainly suffer, since no other motive can be 
relied on to make the boy do the work he ought to 
do at school, and the man read the books he ought 
to read in after-life. 

LIST OF QUESTIONS. 

1. How should we proceed to bring about the 
development of a child? 

2. Illustrate at length. 

3. Can pleasure alone be relied on as a mo- 
tive to induce pupils to study? 

4. Why not? 

5. What did Horace Mann say about it? 

6. Who was Horace Mann ? 




338 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

LESSON XL. 

THE STUDY OF CHILDREN. 

J^LL, the roads in the Roman Empire led 
to the city of Rome." At every turn 
and corner in our study of our subject, 
we have seen that successful teaching demands a 
close and careful and systematic study of children. 
At this stage in the history of the world, men have 
come to clearly realize the fact that no matter 
what happens in the physical world, there is a 
cause for it. If a watch stops, or a lock refuses to 
act, there is a cause for it, and a patient study of 
the facts of the case may enable us to discover and 
remove it. That is precisely the attitude which, 
as it seems to me, teachers should take toward 
their pupils. If your pupils are not interested in 
any particular subject, if they are inattentive, if 
they do not like to go to school, there is a cause 
for it, and it is your business to learn what it is. 
Do not be guilty of the stupidity of saying that 
some boys " naturally " dislike school. That is 
an easy explanation to which lazy teachers have a 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 339 

great tendency to resort. But it has a painful 
likeness to some of the explanations of the Middle 
Ages. " Moving bodies have a natural tendency 
to stop," said the scholars of that time. " Some 
boys naturally dislike books, " say many of our 
teachers now. Precisely as a more careful study 
of the facts has thoroughly discredited the former 
explanation, so I believe a careful study of the 
facts will thoroughly discredit the latter. 

That the importance of the study of children 
is beginning to be generally recognized is one of 
the most encouraging signs of the times. In the 
beginning of the study of Pedagogy in this coun- 
try, it was confined almost entirely to a study 
of methods. Later, it was seen that the most 
fruitful study of Pedagogy includes a study of the 
principles that underlie methods, that in order to 
know how to deal with the human mind, we must 
know why we deal with it thus and so, and that to 
know the why of our procedure, we must know 
the laws that govern it. And little by little educa- 
tors have come to see that after all the text book 
on Psychology, which it is of most importance for 
teachers to study, is one whose pages are ever open 
before them — the minds of their pupils, and the 



A 



34-0 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

children with whom they come in contact. One 
of the leading institutions for the training of 
teachers in the country encourages its students to 
make a careful and systematic study of children.* 
Thinking you might find the directions and cau- 
tions, etc., relating to the subject which it gives to 
its students, helpful and suggestive, I have con- 
cluded to give them entire. They are as follows : 

OBSERVATION OF CHILDREN. 

"A. Cautions. 

I. Do not seek the remarkable sayings and 
doings of precocious children. Seek what 
is common and habitual. 

II. Report only the observation without com- 
ments or reflections. 

III. Never allow a child to know that he is 
observed. 

IV. Avoid drawing conclusions, even in your 
own mind, from too few data. Darwin ob- 
served worms for many years before be dared 
write about them. 

*The New York College for the Training of Teachers. This is also 
done with great thoroughness at the Normal School in Worcester, Mass. 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 341 

B. Things to be observed. 
1. Knowledge. 

a. The development of the animal senses. 
Which develop first ? Which most rapidly? 

b. Learning to talk. 

1. How young? 

2. What words first ? 

3. How many words in a given time ? 

c. How do children gain knowledge ? 

1. When examining a new object, what qual- 
ity first strikes them form, color, taste, use? 

2. When asking questions, what kind do they 
ask? 

d. How clear are the mental pictures which 
they form? 

e. A child's curiosity. 

1. How limited? 

2. How satisfied ? 

3. Difference in children in degree of curi- 
osity. 

f. In what line is the greatest ignorance 
displayed ? 

g. The effect of parentage and nationality 
on the extent and direction of a child's 
knowledge. 



342 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

h. How do children gain ideas of beauty? 
Of personal rights? 

i. When do they get the idea, " I am I " ? 

j. Study the capabilities of children, as 
shown in drawing, sewing, building, plan- 
ning, etc. 

II. Attention. 

a. How can you gain a child's attention? 
How keep it ? 

b. How cultivate attention ? 

c. Under what circumstances have you ob- 
served long continued concentration ? 

III. Imagination. 

a. Is imagination natural to children? 
b* Does the power increase with age? 

c. Note examples of lying, real or apparent, 
resulting from imagination. 

d. Note the result of reading " Arabian 
Nights," etc. 

e. Study children's ideas of the sky, of 
death, of God, and spiritual things. 

IV. Reason. 

a. How soon do children begin to reason ? 

b. Is there any difference in reasoning power 
between boys and girls? 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 343 

c. Seek examples of the reasoning power in 
children. 

V. Habit. 

a. How soon do children begin to form 
habits ? 

b. Note the formation of habits. 

1. What are formed with ease? 

2. What with difficulty? 

c. How are habits formed? 

d. How are they broken ? 

VI. Memory. 

a. What kind of memory is most found in 
children ? 

b. When do they exhibit striking differ- 
ences? 

c. What examples of long memory? 

d. What instances of logical memory, of 
recognition without recollection? 

VII. Feeling. 

#. Likes and dislikes. 
1. Things. 

a. Amusements, plays, and games — social 
and solitary. 

b. Favorite stories, songs, and myths. 

c. Animals, flowers, etc. 



344 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

d. Places. 
2. Persons. 

a. Attachments and aversions. 

b. Shyness, self-consciousness, pride, fear, 
anger. 

VIII. Conscience. 

a. Is it innate ? 

b. How soon are there any signs of con- 
science ? 

c. Examples of confession of wrong-doing 
brought about by conscience alone. 

IX. Will. 

a. Do young children have strong wills ? 

b. When should obedience begin to be re- 
quired ? How ? 

X. Ways of dealing with children. 

a. When naughty. 

b. When afraid. 

c. When shy. 

d. When self-conscious. 

e. When injured. 

f. When angry. 

XI. Progress of children. 

a. In the acquisition of knowledge, 
i. Through the senses. 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 345 

2. Through the memory. 

b. In overcoming faults. 

c. In the development of will. 

d. Compare the progress of children with 
the progress of brutes e. g. teaching a 
child and a dog to pick up a stick. 

XII. General observations. 

a. In what respects do children differ most? 

b. What is the influence of heredity ? 

c. To what extent will environment and 
training overcome the effects of heredity ? 

QUESTIONS FOR CHILDREN — TO FIND OUT THE 
CONTENTS AND WORKINGS OF THEIR MINDS. 

[The plan involves the selection of some ten 
children, differing in ability, training and school 
advantages, in groups of about the same age. 
Each one is to be asked every question alone. 
The answers are to be accurately recorded, in uni- 
form style, for filing and comparison.] 
I. Observation. 

1. How many legs has a fly? How many 



wings ? 



2. What can a fly do that you can not? 
23 



346 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

3. When a horse eats grass, does he walk 
forward or backward ? A cow ? 

4. How many toes has a horse ? 

5. How many feet has a snake? 

6 How does a' robin look? What kind of a 
nest does she build ? 

7. What colored clothes does a policeman 
wear ? 

8. How does a dog cross a deep stream ? 

9. What color is the sky? 

II. Information. 

1. Who is the President of the United States? 
• 2. Where do potatoes come from? 

3. What are your shoes made of? What is 
leather ? 

4. Where does milk come from ? 

5. Did you ever see the surface of the earth? 

6. Why is it dark at night? 

7. How are the streets of the city lighted at 
night? 

III. Sense of beauty. 

1. What is the prettiest thing you ever saw? 

2. Why do you think it is pretty ? 

3. What kind of music do you like best? 

4 What are the prettiest flowers you know? 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 347 

5. Do you like pictures? Why? 

IV. Personal tastes. 

1. What games do you like to play best? 
Why? 

2. What would you like for Christinas ? 

3. What little boy or girl do you like the 
best ? Why ? 

4. Which do you like better city or country? 
Why ? 

5. Would you rather ride in the cars or in a 
carriage ? 

6. What colored flowers do you like best ? 

V. Imagination. 

1. If you should go to the moon, what would 
you see ? 

2. What are fairies. 

3. How 7 does an angel look? 

4. What is lightning? 

5. What would you like to do when you grow 
up ? 

6. What do dogs think about? 

7. Can they talk to each other? How? 

8. What is Heaven like ? 

9. How far away is the sky ? 

VI. Reasoning power. 



348 LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 

i. Why does not it snow in summer? 

2. Why does a cat make so much noise when 
she walks ? 

3. Where do the fishes go when it rains ? 

4. Why does not a dog walk on two legs ? 

5. Are snow and rain alike ? 

6. Why does a fire engine go so fast ? 

7. What is the use of doors? 

8. Why do not grown up people go to school ? 

9. Do boot blacks like to have it rain ? 

10. Why does not grass grow in winter? " 
But if you wish to get the widest and deepest, 

and at the same time the most helpful knowledge 
of the human mind, do not confine yourself to the 
study of your own mind and that of children, but 
study the mind of man as it is revealed in history. 
The sluggish Oriental, the intellectual Athenian, 
the superstitious Knight of the Middle Ages, are 
so many different forms into which our common 
human nature has been carved by that marvelous 
sculptor — education. The teacher who studies 
history from the point of view of Psychology will 
not only find himself in possession of constantly- 
growing and useful and inspiring knowledge of 
historical facts, but he will find his knowledge of 



LESSONS IN PSYCHOLOGY 349 

the human mind enlarging, and his realization of 
the almost omnipotence of education ever grow- 
ing more vivid. 

LIST OF QUESTIONS. 

i. What was the character of the first study 
of Pedagogy in this country ? 

2. How is it studied now? 

3. Mention some of the cautions which you 
should bear in mind in studying children. 

4. Mention some of the things to be observed. 

5. Mention some of the questions to be asked 
in learning the contents of children's minds. 

6. Can you study Psychology in history? 



THE END. 



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